William Kristol, New York Times, today:
Furthermore, if you add up the votes in all the primaries and caucuses — excluding Michigan (where only Hillary was on the ballot), and imputing the likely actual totals in the four caucus states, where only percentages were reported — Clinton now trails in overall votes by only about 300,000, or about 1 percent of the total. By the end of the nominating contest, she may well be ahead on this benchmark — one not entirely to be scorned in a democracy.
William Kristol and David Tell, Weekly Standard, November 20, 2000:
As a matter of constitutional law, the nationwide popular vote is an entirely irrelevant consideration here. No man has ever campaigned for the nationwide popular vote, and no man has ever been elected president because he's won it. Like it or not, the Electoral College is everything. Intimating otherwise, and in the same breath circulating fictions about polling-place irregularities, the Gore camp has done its best to ensure that should George W. Bush eventually be elected president, some faint whiff of illegitimacy will hang over his administration. It will be unfair and corrosive.
--Jonathan Chait