Yesterday in DC, Dianne Feinstein hosted a sit-down session between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
After the meeting, Feinstein who has in the past pushed Obama to select Clinton as veep, seemed to push the false claim that Clinton had won the "popular vote."
People, particularly in this case because Hillary represents a very large bloc of voters — the largest ever for anybody that has come in No. 2, and has the popular vote.
That was the quote in The New York Times, and The Hill also quoted Feinstein the same way. But USA Today had a different quote:
Hillary Clinton represents a very large bloc of voters — the largest ever for anybody who's ever come in No. 2 in the popular vote.
Either way, by even talking about the popular vote argument, Feinstein is using a dishonest, misleading metric -- as I've said many times, you can't simply add together the results of different contests in different states run under different rules. Doing so unfairly penalizes states with caucuses or closed primaries.
So even if Feinstein recognizes that Clinton didn't win the popular vote, by using that fake metric she's reopening a wound from the nomination process when we should be trying to heal.
© Jed Lewison