It's an inevitability in every presidential campaign season: The Democratic candidate will come under criticism from the press, old Washington centrists, and even some in his or her own party for running a narrow campaign that turns its back on large portions of America, seeking only to pile up votes where Democratic partisans are plentiful. The first installment of this critique came on Sunday in a front-page article in The New York Times, which began this way:
Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be dispensing with the nationwide electoral strategy that won her husband two terms in the White House and brought white working-class voters and great stretches of what is now red-state America back to Democrats.
Instead, she is poised to retrace Barack Obama's far narrower path to the presidency: a campaign focused more on mobilizing supporters in the Great Lakes states and in parts of the West and South than on persuading undecided voters.
Mrs. Clinton's aides say it is the only way to win in an era of heightened polarization, when a declining pool of voters is truly up for grabs. Her liberal policy positions, they say, will fire up Democrats, a less difficult task than trying to win over independents in more hostile territory-even though a broader strategy could help lift the party with her.
This early in the campaign, however, forgoing a determined outreach effort to all 50 states, or even most of them, could mean missing out on the kind of spirited conversation that can be a unifying feature of a presidential election. And it could leave Mrs. Clinton, if she wins, with the same difficulties Mr. Obama has faced in governing with a Republican-controlled Congress.
Spare a thought in mourning for that spirited, unifying conversation we might have enjoyed, not to mention that hypothetical Hillary Clinton presidency characterized by fruitful cooperation with Republicans (like Bill's, I guess). In these four paragraphs I count five separate fictions, each of them not just false but demonstrably, completely, almost absurdly false. But we needn't go into all of them to address the essential myth that says that presidential campaigns have a moral responsibility to waste their time and resources by campaigning in places where they have virtually no chance of winning.
And odder still, this particular formulation-which, to repeat, appears in news articles in every election-is for some reason only applied to Democrats. While the narrowness of the Republican coalition is often discussed at length, their identical decision to campaign in some places but not in others is usually presented as a necessary result of their party's limitations, not a morally problematic choice they've made to deprive large portions of the country of the blessing of their attention.
So let's be clear: Both the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees will only compete in some states, but not in others. They will ignore the same states-those that are clearly going to go for one candidate or the other-and spend the bulk of their time on those "battleground" states where the polls show a tight race. That's what they've done since polling made it possible to distinguish one kind of state from another, and that's what they'll continue to do.
The comparison of Hillary Clinton's campaign to those of her husband is only possible if you ignore the changes that have taken place in the last quarter-century. Bill Clinton did exactly what Hillary Clinton will do: He campaigned in places where he had a chance of winning. It happens that in the early 1990s, that included some Southern states. But Clinton didn't win Southern states because he campaigned in the South, he campaigned in the South because he had an opportunity there. The transformation of the South from a Democratic stronghold into a Republican one was not nearly as complete in 1992 as it was now; there were still plenty of white Southerners who would vote for the right Democrat. That meant Clinton could win states like Georgia, Louisiana, and his home state of Arkansas.
In the time since, the steady movement of white Southerners toward the GOP has put those states out of reach for any Democrat. That situation isn't permanent; for instance, changing demographics in Georgia (including increases in both African-American and Hispanic residents) could put it within reach of a Democrat soon, if not in 2016 then probably in 2020. But in other states, significant white majorities who vote almost exclusively for Republican presidential candidates make the outcome of the state's contest unavoidable.
Given that fact-and the Democratic dominance in much of the Northeast and West-it would be almost demented to expect either party's presidential candidate to campaign everywhere. When Hillary Clinton declines to hold rallies in Mississippi, she won't be purposely snubbing the good people of the South, any more than the Republican candidate will be sticking a thumb in the eye of New England by not bothering to compete in Connecticut. And let's not forget that candidates won't just be avoiding places where the other party is strong, they'll be ignoring their own supporters as well. Clinton may ignore Alabama, but she'll ignore Vermont, too; the Republican will be no more likely to campaign in either place. So why do we keep blaming them for acting with the utmost rationality given the political realities of the day?
The parties may from time to time talk about a "50-state strategy," but in practice that usually means little more than a token effort in many places, meant to give a boost to whatever down-ballot candidates might have a chance to eke out a win. If you want to lament the fact that the presidential campaign will take place only in a dozen or so states, don't blame the candidates. Put responsibility where it belongs: with the Electoral College. If we chose our president the way people in every other democracy do-everyone casts their votes, and the candidate with the most votes wins-then campaigns would have an incentive to compete everywhere. It would make perfect sense for a Republican to go to California or a Democrat to go to Texas, because even though they wouldn't get a majority in those states, there would still be plenty of votes to be had.
While changing the Electoral College might seem impossible given the difficulty of amending the Constitution, there is an easier way it could be done. It's called the National Popular Vote, and it involves states choosing to award their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote (the Constitution gives states the ability to assign their electoral votes however they choose). Get states with more than 270 electoral votes to agree, and you've made the Electoral College moot; at the moment 10 states plus the District of Columbia, with a total of 165 electoral votes, have passed laws saying they'll join in once 270 is reached.
There's no way to know whether the National Popular Vote will ever succeed. But as long as we have the current system of winner-take-all by state, it's preposterous to blame the candidates for competing only in the small number of states whose outcome is uncertain-let alone saying their mutual decision to do so is some kind of insult to the fine folks who live elsewhere.
