I should have known this but I confess I didn't:
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination.This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides.
What? Isn’t that impossible? A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right?
Wrong...
The notion that pledged delegates must vote for a certain candidate is, according to the Democratic National Committee, a “myth.”
“Delegates are NOT bound to vote for the candidate they are pledged to at the convention or on the first ballot,” a recent DNC memo states. “A delegate goes to the convention with a signed pledge of support for a particular presidential candidate. At the convention, while it is assumed that the delegate will cast their vote for the candidate they are publicly pledged to, it is not required.”
Since you can be "pledged" without being "bound", this surely raises the question whether you can be "bound" without being "required", or vice versa, or indeed whether you can be "required" without being "actually required", or "bound, in fact". Fortunately the party has a few lawyers on hand, so I'm sure the correct result will emerge in the end...but am I alone in thinking that this system leaves something to be desired?
No, you're not alone. I find the whole thing disappointing. I've been trying to make arguments for weeks that Senator Clinton deserves more fair consideration by the overwhelmingly pro-Obama bloggies. But frankly, even thinking of going after pledged delegates (let alone slipping it to the press) is a numbskull notion, the kind of thing I'd have expected from Karl Rove in his post-genius years.
Aren't her managers aware that Democrats are a bit sick of underhanded political tactics? Sure, she's put together a staff with an eye towards fighting Republicans, and she's clearly of the belief that you have to "fight fire with fire" and that matches her campaign staff choices. But as any good ball coach knows, you have to coach to the personnel and the situation. And by now it should be immensely clear that she's not going to beat Obama with strongarm tactics - that stuff reminds Dems of Bush/Rove and plays right to his cards. Instead she should be trying to convince the public that she's likable enough to win the general.
She doesn't have to match charisma with Obama - she just needs to convince people that despite her high negatives with the general public she can draw enough independents in the general election to win. It's not a coincidence her highest positives came after "the cry", an unscripted and touching moment. Her high negatives have always been her big weakness and now her staff seems intent on making it worse. Penn, Ickes, Wolfson, etc. should have all been fired before Patty Solis Doyle.
Posted by Harrison | February 19, 2008 10:33 PM