The US Elections: And Pigs Will Fly

On March 26th, Bob Cesca at the Huffington Post posted a video he'd assembled to the tune of Roger Waters's "The Tide Is Turning".

This was right after Obama's extraordinary race speech in Pennsylvania, and there was, amongst Obama-ists and general optimists alike, a sense that the cynical, subversive policies of Politics had been averted.

Cesca wrote:

I have no idea who Roger Waters is supporting in this thing (and I hasten to note that this video was created without his permission), but when I heard Senator Obama's historic Philadelphia address last week, this song, "The Tide Is Turning," from Waters' underrated 1987 album Radio KAOS kept running on a loop in my head.

Cynicism averted? No so. Indeed, less than a month later, after the state of Pennsylvania had held its primary, it was the triumphant old guard - Clinton - who went on stage to claim the self same slogan. Unlike Cesca, Clinton presumably had never heard of Roger Waters. And even if she had, she certainly wasn't aware of the bitter-sweet song Cesca refers to.

No matter, though. Neither were the Pennsylvanians. And neither is, it seems, America.

But a few days later, April 27th - last sunday - Roger Waters gave the closing concert at the Coachella music festival in California. And he brought a huge inflatable pig with him. And guess what? The pig had "Obama" written on its belly. So Cesca had it right, even if he didn't dare say so out right at the time.

But here's the thing:

As Waters drew the song to a close, flame bursts exploded on the sides of the stage and the swine floated into the night sky. Waters said sadly and comically, "That's my pig."

Ah, yes, Obama. Floating away into the night sky. There's our pig, going, going - gone.

Although, of course, there is a reward. It seems that if you manage to salvage the whole thing - and get the pig back - $ 10,000 will be yours.

Well, that has to be a worthy cause, right?

The US Elections: Indiana or Bust!

Here's a fact no-one will bother mentioning: Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary by 9%.

Prior to the results, just about all the pundits were pointing out that she needed a double-digit victory in the Keystone State. It was 10% or more - or bust.

She almost managed the 10% minimum, but not quite. By current calculations, she got 1,260,208 votes. Obama got 1,045,444 votes. In other words, she beat Obama by a margin of 9.3%. Rounded, that's 9% - and not 10%, as every media source in the world is exuberantly reporting today.

Does that matter? No, not really, but it's a interesting little example of how the media push a message which makes little sense, even to themselves.

In any case, it's on to Indiana. For what it's worth, I've considered this the truly key state for a little while now. And since perceptions tend to change - and change strangely - over time, I'm laying the down the current state of affairs in that state, as far as we know them.

Clinton's ahead in the polls. In the current RCP average, she's beating Obama by 2.2%. Pollster has her in the lead by 6%.

In other words, Clinton should win, certainly given the state's demographics (roughly similar to Ohio or Pennsylvania) and certainly given the boost her campaign will inevitably get from the Pennsylvania result.

But let's see what happens. If Obama has sufficient appeal with Democrats to be a viable candidate in the general election, he will overcome his current deficit, thereby convincingly cementing his advantage over Clinton in terms of pledged delegates and waylaying Clinton's popular vote arguments. If, on the other hand, Clinton has any real momentum, she should be able to maintain and indeed augment her present lead, and we will once more have a real battle unfolding.

If, come May 6th, the Indiana results simply reflect the current situation (a marginal Clinton win by 2 to 6%), I think it's fair to say the Democrats have a very real problem.

__________

Edit I (April 25th): today, CNN's "poll of polls" has both candidates at 45%, with 10% unsure.

Edit II (April 28th): today, the RCP average too shows a tie, with both Obama and Clinton at 45.5%. The most recent poll to be included in the average, though - from Survey USA - shows a lead for Clinton 0f no less than 9%.

Edit III (April 30th): today, the RCP average is at + 2.2% for Clinton.

Edit IV (May 4th): RCP puts Clinton ahead by 5.8%.

US Law: Harry Potter and the Mirror of Noisufnoc

On Halloween 2007, author J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros (who own the rights to the Harry Potter films) filed a lawsuit against a small US publisher, RDR Books.

Their aim was and is to block the publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon, which is effectively an A-Z encyclopeadia of all things Potter.

The Lexicon is not, by any means, a new work: it has been around for some time on the Internet and has received praise from Rowling herself, who awarded the web version of the Lexicon with a "Fan Site Award" in 2004. The intention of tranferring the contents of the site to the printed page has, however, provoked a remarkable turnaround in her views on the Lexicon.

During the trial - which commenced on April 14 2008 and lasted three days, the outcome not being expected for a month or so - Rowling accused the author of the site (and the book), Stephen Vander Ark, of "wholesale theft", pointing out that the publication felt like "an act of betrayal". She has also mentioned that the dispute had left her unable to continue work on a new novel, and "decimated my creative work over the last month". Finally, she said the Lexicon threatened to scupper her desire to write a Potter encyclopaedia of her own.

All of this seems, to be frank, a bit rich. It was enough, however, to reduce Mr. Vander Ark - who might be fifty years old or thereabouts, but who himself bears a striking resemblance to Potter - to tears when he testified at the trial.

All in all, it was three days of high courtroom drama, and it's no wonder it caught the public's eye.

It did so, however, mostly for reasons that have little to do with the case's merits. Those merits are, after all, legal and bear little relation to Rowling's curiously vehement and disparaging remarks, or indeed to Vander Ark's equally emotional response.

That's not to say the merits weren't interesting, though. They are.

In effect, the case revolves around the murky concept in American copyright law referred to as "fair use". Fair use, to put it simply, allows for the limited use of copyrighted material in certain instances. The most obvious examples are works of criticism or commentary, where the critic or commentator will have little choice but to regularly quote the original work in order to make his point.

Fair use, US copyright law states, "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (...), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

• the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• the nature of the copyrighted work;
• the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
• and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."

In applying these criteria, two of them can effectively be ignored. "The nature of the copyrighted work" refers to the distinction which might be made between, for example, works of fiction or non-fiction, or the distinction between published or unpublished works, the idea being that it might be easier to assume fair use if the original work is non-fictional, and easier still if it hasn't even been published yet. Here, we're talking about the best known children's books in the world, and they're obviously fiction and obviously published. You can't, in short, assume fair use on the basis of this criterion.

The second criterion to be dismissed is "the effect of the use upon the potential market or value of the copyrighted work". I don't think anyone is arguing that the Lexicon will noticeably effect the market or value of the Harry Potter books. The encyclopaedia Rowling herself wishes to write, by the way, is not relevant, for the simple reason that she hasn't written it yet and it therefore can't be protected by any copyright whatsoever.

That leaves us with the remaining two criteria.

Of these, the first is the most interesting. What is it about "the purpose and character of the use" that means it amounts to - or doesn't amount to - fair use? In case law, some answers have been given, but they are hard to apply to this specific situation.

The most well-known answer is that use is fair (or at least tends towards being fair) when the use is "transformative" and not merely "derivative". Does the use add to the appreciation or knowledge of the original work, or does it seek to "supersede" (parts of) that work?

When it comes to, say, literary criticism, this criterion works well enough. Actual criticism (even if it's bad criticism) almost per definition attempts to add to the understanding or knowledge of the work criticised. When it comes to an encyclopaedia, however, the lines can become a little blurry, certainly if the encyclopaedia focuses solely on a single work (which the Pottter books effectively are).

There are two diametrically opposed ways to deal with this issue in this case. The first is to argue that if, you simply take all the characters of the Potter books, all its places, spells, potions, beasts and the like, and sort them all into neat alphabetical lists, you aren't doing much more than taking a large chunk of Rowling's work (and imagination) and regurgitating it.
The opposing argument is that, by its very definition, an encyclopaedia such as this adds to the understanding and knowledge of the original work. It is intended to be used as a reference tool, a work that therefore has a different (and "transformed") purpose than the original work. Forgotten who Kreachure was or what his background amounted to? Look it up in the Lexicon! Want to write an essay on Platform 9 3/4? Check the Lexicon first!

Ironically, Rowling herself has admitted to using the online Lexicon for just such a purpose. On her own website she once wrote: "This is such a great site that I have been known to sneak into an internet café while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter (which is embarrassing)."

I must admit to being on RDR's side when it comes to these opposing views. Once a work is published it is, to a certain extent, handed over to its audience. They aren't allowed to copy it - they must accept the work's integrity and the author's rightful claims to the work as a whole - but the audience is certainly free to scrutinise, dissect, and digest it in pretty much any way they wish to. And yes, that includes, in my opinion, writing something like the Lexicon. In fact, I would consider the Lexicon a prime example of "fair use".

This criterion, it should be noted, also mentions the distinction between use that is commercial and that is non-profit and intended for educational purposes. And this is clearly where Rowling herself has drawn a line: the online Lexicon is freely available to all; the printed version will have to be bought. The trouble is, though, that just about any printed work is, at least in part, a commercial exercise. The trouble is, too, that nowadays extensive sites like Vander Ark's are exactly the same. They will almost always allow for commercial advertising; they may very well call for readers' donations to keep the site up and running. And they can clearly result in commercial fringe benefits for the owners of the site, the impending publication of the Lexicon as a book being, well, a case in print.

As a result, it is difficult to see how this can be a reasonable and practical distinction in today's world. Having said that, though, it might well prove to be Rowling's only real line of attack: if she and Warner Bros can successfully argue that RDR is only in it in order to make the proverbial "fast buck" (and, by implication, couldn't care less about the quality of the Lexicon as a reference), they may stand a chance. That judge in New York may well make the same mistake Rowling is making: that a fansite like the Lexicon is a cute, innocuous affair, whilst a publication of the self-same material in book form by a small publisher is a horrendous breach of copyright.

The final criterion - the "amount and substantiality of the portion [of the original work] used" - ties in with the previous one. Again, the arguments to either side will have to express polarities, with Rowling and Warner Bros echoing their view that since it is in the Lexicon's very nature to basically sum up everyone and everything in the Potter books, the Lexicon uses a great amount of the original work indeed. And RDR will argue that that is exactly why it can be considered a reference tool - it wouldn't be very much use if Vander Ark had, for example, left out all entries starting with the letters "H" through "P".

All in all, this is an intriguing case, the more so, perhaps, by virtue of the fact that quite a few legal experts don't seem very sure of the outcome. That may surprise some people, but the fact is that an endeavour such as the Lexicon is a rare thing, the more so if it is undertaken with a regard to a more or less recent work (where copyright protection still applies), but not by the original publishers and without the author's consent. In other words, such a dispute just doesn't really crop up much.

Equally and additionally, though, it is another example of how the Internet has totally changed everyone's perceptions on so many issues. This time round it's legal issues that count, but simmering below the surface we have Rowling's clear and no doubt honest difficulty in letting go of some aspects of her own creation - not in the ethereal world of the Internet, but in what she seems to perceive as the real world. And on the other hand we have the hapless Vander Ark, who spent years working on his site out of love for Potter and admiration for Rowling to just about everyone's acclaim, only to now be told he is "really" just a thief after all.

There's something decidedly odd about this case. It does two things at once: pose a legal problem that's intriguing enough in itself, and then juxtapose it to the ever-transcending reality of the virtual world. It's a Mirror of Noisufnoc.

The US Elections: Predicting Pennsylvania

Later today, ABC News will be broadcasting the Clinton/Obama debate in Philadelphia. It'll be interesting to see how well - or indeed, how poorly - Obama does. He's certainly gotten better at these debates as the campaign moved on; on the other hand, there is sure to be some emphasis on the recent "Bittergate" controversy.

Meanwhile, though, predictions are always fun to read, especially if they're specific and clearly well thought-out.

Predictions of the outcome of the Pennsylvania primary have been made in the past months. Here's an example from Real Clear Politics, written by Jay Cost. However, these have tended to be a bit unspecific. The RCP article doesn't, for instance, actually state a likely outcome when it comes to the one thing that matters above all else: the delegate tally.

Two other articles, on the other hand, provide just such a tally, based on a district by district breakdown of the state. The first is from CQ Politics. The second can be found over at Daily Kos.

To understand all the numbers, you have to first understand that Pennsylvania's pool of delegates amounts to a grand total of 187. However, that includes 29 superdelegates, who aren't going to be subject to the vote at all. That leaves 158 delegates that are actually going to be up for grabs during the primary.

Of these, 55 will be allocated on the basis of the statewide popular vote. If, for example, Clinton wins by 55% to 45% (the same margin of victory she had in Ohio), these 55 delegates will be split up as follows: 30 to Clinton, 25 to Obama.

The remaining 103 delegates will be allocated on the basis of the outcome of the vote on a district by district basis. There are 19 congressional districts in total. Each district has a certain number of delegates, the "largest" district (the 2nd) having 9 delegates and the "smallest" (the 9th) having three. 6 districts have 5 delegates to allocate; 5 districts have 4 delegates. (Strange, there almost seems to be a patern of numerical reflections here...)

Given the peculiarities of the district system, the outcome per district will either substantially augment the victor's win or substantially decrease it. The winner of the popular vote in a district with an uneven number of delegates will generally walk away with a relatively high number of pledged delegates; the loser, on the other hand, benefits when the number of delegates is even. If one candidate were to win the popular vote by, say 5%, in a district with 5 delegates, he or she would get 3 delegates, leaving 2 for the opposing candidate. The 5% margin in the popular vote, in other words, translates into a 20% margin in the delegate tally. Conversely, if that district had only 4 delegates on offer, those delegates would be split evenly. In fact, if the popular vote margin went up to, say, 20% the delegates would still be split down the middle (if there were only 4 of them to begin with).

The consequence of this system is that, when it come to the district delegates, it makes very little sense to campaign hard in a district with 4 delegates if your chances of sweeping it aren't very high; on the other hand, getting that slight edge in a 5-delegate district could be well be worth your while. The campaigns, therefore, are waging an on-the-ground war aimed at key districts; the statewide polls of the popular vote are meaningful, but not necessarily as decisive as many people think.

Now back to the two predictions. In both cases, the outcome is not really good news for Clinton. In the CQ projection, the 103 district delegates will be split as follows: 53 will go to Clinton and 50 to Obama. That's a Clinton victory of just 3 delegates. Unfortunately, CQ doesn't say anything about the expected outcome of the popular vote, so it remains unclear how they think the other 55 delegates would be allocated. Assuming, though, that Clinton "wins" Pennsyslvania as a whole by 10%, that would mean her net gain in the state would amount to (5 + 3 =) 8 delegates.

Over at Daily Kos, a statewide Clinton win of 9% is assumed, with Clinton gaining a net advantage in the district war of 5 delegates. That would put her total gain in the state at (5 + 5 =) 10 delegates.

The predictions are, therefore, effectively the same. Interestingly enough, Clinton won Ohio by 9 delegates. So Jay Cost at RCP, who wasn't explicit when it came to delegate numbers but who did say that Pennsylvania might well go the way of Ohio, may be even more correct than he imagined.

Oh, and to put it all into some perspective: Obama currently leads Clinton in the pledged delegate tally some 164 delegates. Let's say that does, indeed, decrease to 154 or thereabouts.

After six weeks, some bowling, a few shots of whiskey and all the rest, that's not really much to talk about, is it? More than anything else, I feel this proves the silliness of the entire "Bittergate" thing. Which is why I'll not say more about it.

International Affairs: Freedom Stir-Fries

When France raised strong objections against a possible invasion of Iraq in 2003, many Americans were outraged. This is from Wikipedia:

On March 11 United States House of Representatives Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) and Walter B. Jones, Jr. (R-North Carolina) declared that all references to French fries (...) on the menus of the restaurants and snack bars run by the House of Representatives would be removed. House cafeterias were ordered to rename French fries "freedom fries".

Well, the invasion went on as planned and turned out to be, as we now know, a resounding success.

The "freedom fries" absurdity - perpetuated, I understand, to this day by some restaurants - is one of the silliest examples of boycotts I know. It wasn't even a real boycott, since absolutely no-one actually stopped eating French fries (which aren't even "French" at all).

Olympic boycotts, on the other hand, do tend to be real, even if their impact varies greatly depending on who's boycotting whom. It doesn't mean they can't be silly too, though.

The first Olympics to be boycotted were the Melbourne Games of 1956. A few European countries decided on a boycott as a reaction to the Soviet Union's quashing of the uprising in Hungary earlier that year; a few other countries boycotted due to the Suez Crisis. Both were obviously important and disconcerting (international) events, but neither boycott achieved anything. Looking back, it is, in fact, difficult to imagine how the boycotting countries could have imagined that their absence in a sporting event in Australia could ever have been seen as an significant reaction to Cold War politics in Europe or Africa.

The most famous boycott, no doubt, was that of the Moscow Games in 1980. The year before, the Soviet Union had effectively invaded Afghanistan in an attempt to save that country's communist government from defeat at the hands of the so-called Mujahideen, the "freedom fighters" portrayed so favourably in American media and in American films such as Rambo III.

The boycott, led by the US, was an actual succes in the sense that some 65 countries did not attend the games (although not all of them were absent due to the Afghan crisis), leaving only 81 countries to compete. It did not, however, have any effect on Soviet policy in Afghanistan. The Soviets didn't pull out of Afghanistan until 1989 (clearing the way for the Taliban to emerge out of the ranks of the Mujahideen and thereby setting the stage for a new invasion of the country in 2001, this time led by the US).

The Soviets reciprocated in 1984, boycotting that year's Olymics in Los Angeles. It was clear they didn't have any real reason to so except petty retaliation, and I don't recall anyone missing them (or their Eastern Block allies) very much at the time.

For some time after that, the Games were relatively boycott-free (although there were minor exceptions).

Now, however, things may change again. This time round, it's China's turn, and the reasons for a possible boycott are again tenuous.

The IOC awarded the 2008 Olympics to Beijing back in 2001. At the time, it was, perhaps, a surprising decision. Communist China's history when it comes to human rights has never been good, and it certainly wasn't any better in 2001 than it is now. If anything, the memories of what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989 were more vivid then than they are now; China's crack-down on the Falun Gong movement had already started in 1999.

It was, however, a decision that acknowledged the undeniable fact that China was emerging as a new superpower and that, like it or not, there really wasn't any way the (Western) world could afford to ignore that reality. And it was also a decision that seemed to express the hope that engagement - the essentialy non-divisive engagement of sports in particular - might bring its own dividends.

In short, the decision was both realistic and optimistic, and it was taken in the full knowledge of the Chinese government's shortcomings.

So what, one could ask, has changed since then to perhaps justify a boycott? The only possible answer to that is: nothing at all.

Yes, China supressed the recent unrest in Tibet, and it did so using some force. It wasn't, however, the first time: in 1959, there had been a larger but still presumably small-scale uprising in Tibet, which Mao swiftly crushed by considerably harsher means (and which led to the Dalai Lama's flight to India). There wasn't, in other words, much reason to be surprised or shocked by China's reaction to the March 2008 events.

Besides, do any of us know what the recent unrest amounted to, how it was started or to what degree the Chinese reaction was or was not justifiable? I rather suspect that many people in the West have an essentially romantic and fuzzy perception of Tibet and that a lot of us look at the country in rather the same way we looked at Afghanistan in the 1980's, with the ascetic and peace-loving Tibetans taking the place of the fierce and noble Mujahideen. We tend, therefore, to gloss over the fact that, insofar the recent unrest in Tibet was accompanied by violence, that violence was initiated by the Tibetans themselves. And whilst one might vehemently diagree with China's rule over Tibet in the first place, it is possible that China's response to that violence was, in effect, proportional and more or less reasonable.

Then there's the issue of China's involvement in the horrendous Darfur crisis, which is an even weaker reason to argue for a possible boycott by virtue of the simple fact that China's involvement actually amounts to a non-involvement. The argument here - as again evinced by mainly Western critics - is that China, given its links to the Sudanese government, is not doing enough to ameliorate the situation in Darfur. When Steven Spielberg withdrew as artistic adviser for Beijing Games, he expressed this point of view as follows:

“Sudan’s Government bears the bulk of the responsibility for these ongoing crimes but the international community, and particularly China, should be doing more to end the continuing human suffering there,” [Spielberg said]. “China’s economic, military and diplomatic ties to the Government of Sudan continue to provide it with the opportunity and obligation to press for change."

China's policy in Africa, however, has been consistently non-intervenionist throughout. It is consistent, also, with China's own reaction to any outside interference in what it regards as its internal affairs, such as Tibet. China's inaction in Sudan can therefore hardly come as a surprise either. In addition to this, it's fair to say that the West's own policies with regard to Sudan (and Rwanda, and Congo, and Zimbabwe) have been remarkably passive as well. And to the extent that the West did attempt to pursue a positive and active role in Africa it has hardly been very successful. Had that been otherwise, all those African countries wouldn't have welcomed China with wide-open arms in the first place.

The reasons for awarding the 2008 Games to Beijing were, it seems to me, valid back in 2001. And if they were valid then, they are equally valid now (and, if only because of China's increasing importance on the world's economic stage, even more so). Boycotting the Games would be hypocritical and illogical, and it would have no other effect than to humiliate and isolate a country that we should be attempting to engage with.

A boycott - that is to say: a real boycott - should be out of the question. And it probably is: at this moment, no country has yet declared it will not allow its athletes to compete in Beijing.

That, however, leaves open the option of the boycott that isn't. And currently, world leaders - not to mention wannabe world leaders - are scrambling to grab hold of it. Neither the UK's Gordon Brown nor Germany's Angela Merkel, it has recently been announced, will attend the opening ceremony of the Games (although in Brown's case, it's the closing ceremony that counts, given the 2012 Games are in London). The Polish PM, Donald Tusk, has been a little braver is linking his absence unequivocally to the Tibetan issue, whilst today, the European Parliament urged all other European heads of state to follow suit.

Meanwhile, in the US, Clinton and Obama both have prompted Bush to go AWOL as well.

So, it seems, we'll end up with the silliest of all things: a boycott that not only has no impact, but that is intended to have no impact. And rather like Representatives Ney and Jones, we'll all be watching the Games come August to our hearts' content, happily munching our way through our freedom fries (though they'll be stir-fried, this time round) and secure in the knowledge that we Did Something About It All.

In their bid to win the 2008 Games, the Chinese confirmed that the Games would "advance the social agenda of China, including human rights". I suspect that they believe they have adhered to this "pledge", and are in all honesty wondering what on earth hit them.

The US Elections: The Popular Vote Myth

Things seem relatively quiet today on the Democratic front. As a result, a little news snippet that otherwise might have only have led to a comment or two in passing has been given some attention, if still not enough.

It's the assertion by two stalwart Clinton supporters, John Murtha and Jon Corzine, that Clinton needs to win the popular vote to have any real chance of winning the nomination.

Now the relevance of this seems obvious enough. Clinton can't realistically hope to overtake Obama in terms of the pledged delegate count. To stay alive and have a shot at convincing the superdelegates to back her, she needs to be able to argue that the voters, overall, prefer her to Obama.

And if that argument could be made truthfully, it might be persuavive (although not in itself conclusive). After all, quite a few Democrats are still smarting from the fact that Bush bested Gore in 2000, in spite of the fact that Gore led the popular vote by about 500,000. What could be worse than that the Democrats, after having to accept that grievous injustice, were then to turn around and inflict it upon themselves?

You can see how this could be a seen as a strong argument. It is, however, fundamentally flawed for a number of reasons.

The first flaw is as blatantly obvious as it is convincing. The Democrats set up their own rules when it comes to choosing their nominee. What they've chosen is a delegate system, not a system based on the popular vote. There's no reason on earth why they couldn't have switched to a popular vote system if they'd wanted to. They didn't. They chose for a system whereby the delegate count was the determining factor.

The second flaw, though, is the one that I find more interesting at the moment. It's this: how on earth does one actually determine the popular vote?

In the presidential election, that's easy enough. The count can certainly be hampered by technical issues - which is what happened in Florida in 2000 - but the idea is that everyone gets to vote in basically the same way, all the votes get counted and that it.

Not so in the primary season. For starters, when it comes to the popular vote there's a huge difference between primaries and caucuses. Turnout in caucuses is obviously very much lower than in primaries, so how does one compare the two? It would, perhaps, be possible to set up intricate number crunching models that would allow for some sort of extrapolation of a caucus turnout to a virtual primary. Alternatively, one could just accept the actual numbers. In both cases, however, it's essentially comparing apples and oranges.

Take, for example, State X. It's in the mid-West, and it looks a bit like Colorado. Or perhaps Oklahoma. It's got 5 million inhabitants; it's predominantly a red state, but it might just turn blue in November.

Now say it's a caucus state (like Colorado). Comes the caucus date, 100,000 people show up to vote for their Democratic candidate of choice. 60,000 vote for Obama, 40,000 for Clinton. In the total popular vote tally, that's a net gain of 20,000 for Obama.

But now let's assume X is a primary state (like Oklahoma). Suddenly, the turnout isn't 100,000. It's 400,000. Assuming the same divisions apply, Obama wins the popular vote by 80,000.

That makes for a significant difference in the popular vote tally. But that difference has nothing to do with the candidates or how well they're doing.

Now, the above example assumes that voters vote the same way whether it's a caucus or primary (the only variable being the number of voters). We all know that's not true. Caucus states favour the grass-roots candidate; primary states, by comparison, favour the more establishment candidate (whilst Texas, in an maudlin fit of madness, favours both).

In state X, if Obama would have won by a margin of 20,000 in a caucus, he may well have lost in a primary by, oh, 50,000 or so. And the vote tally would be totally different again.

So it's apples and oranges; oranges and apples. And that's just for starters.

Another thing to consider is that some states don't even release voter numbers. This is true for Iowa, Nevada, Washington and Maine. We simply do not no how many people voted for their candidate of choice in these states. If you think this is amazing, consider that these states are - quite rightly - working on the basis of the assumption that the popular vote isn't the deciding factor. So how to determine the popular vote in those states? You can't; the only option is to guesstimate.

A third issue centers on the debacle of Florida and Michigan. In the popular vote debate, does one count the voters in these states or not? And if so, how? In particular, it would certainly seem weird to include Michigan, where Clinton was the only major Democratic candidate to leave her name on the ballot after the DNC sanctions were levied. By what means could anyone assume the outcome in that state was a fair and balanced representation of the voters' views? Besides, the major non-Clinton vote went to a candidate called "Uncommitted". What is one to do with those votes in a popular vote tally? Any choice made is inevitably a wrong choice.

So, what does all this mean? Well, in the end, it's very simple. Given the Democratic nomination process in general and the specifics of this campaign, there simply is no way to accurately determine a relevant outcome of the popular vote.

As a result, the entire concept of Clinton potentially winning such a vote and thereby having a legitimate shot at the nomination is essentially a myth. With apologies to all those doing their very utmost to prove the opposite, it just can't be done. And that's as it should be: it's not what the Democrats wanted in the first place.