Just when it seemed that Barack Obama’s gaffes and the inevitable media swing away from the front-runner was breathing new life into Hillary Clinton’s campaign, she reminds us why half the country really, really hates her.
The Politico’s Roger Simon reports that she’s working back channel deals to subvert the will of Democratic primary voters if it comes to that.
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.
Pledged delegates are not really pledged at all, not even on the first ballot. This has been an open secret in the party for years, but it has never really mattered because there has almost always been a clear victor by the time the convention convened.
And, frankly, because previous contenders for the nomination behaved honorably and accepted the will of the nominating electorate. The Obama campaign, quite naturally, is pouncing:
Says Obama manager David Plouffe in statement: “As it becomes increasingly clear that Senator Clinton may not be able to secure the nomination by winning the support of actual voters, the Clinton campaign has once again floated a strategy that would essentially say that the preference of Democratic voters is a mere obstacle to their win-at-all-costs strategy.”
Kevin Drum observes that “a steady drumbeat of this kind of stuff can be deadly, especially for a candidate banking on her experience and party connections. She really needs to step up her game.” But maybe this is her game?
Many have already applied the “Calvinball” reference to Clinton’s machinations. Maybe it isn’t a just joke?
