Hillary Clinton and the Pledged Delegates

Politico’s Roger Simon broke the story early this morning:

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.

Against the rules? Apparently not:

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.

But not this time. This time, one candidate may enter the convention leading by just a few pledged delegates, and those delegates may find themselves being promised the sun, moon and stars to switch sides.

“I swear it is not happening now, but as we get closer to the convention, if it is a stalemate, everybody will be going after everybody’s delegates,” a senior Clinton official told me Monday afternoon. “All the rules will be going out the window.”

My first thought when I read the above quote was, How does he know what “everybody” will be doing? Christopher Orr at The New Republic had the same thought, and faulted Politico for accepting the Clinton spin without questioning it:

… The Clinton folks quoted in the article repeatedly assert that they’re confident that Barack Obama will try to do the same thing, based of course on no evidence of any kind. Indeed the sole Obamaite quoted in the article says he is unaware of any such plan. So why does Simon just accept the Clintons’ disingenuous spin at face value in his closing graphs:

If, however, after the April 22 Pennsylvania primary the pledged delegate count looks very close, the Clinton official said, “[both] sides will start working all delegates.”

In other words, Clinton and Obama will have to go after every delegate who is alive and breathing.

Perhaps that “Clinton official” should just be speaking on behalf of the candidate he knows firsthand is contemplating overturning the democratic process and tearing the party apart.

Over at Open Left, Chris Bowers’ analysis of the delegates issue strikes me as schizophrenic. He thinks that since regular delegates aren’t required to vote for the candidate they’re pledged to, it’s only natural that, in a brokered convention situation, their votes are going to be up for grabs, and he appears to find that unremarkable and not particularly bothersome.

So, the Politico has a supposedly breaking story about the Clinton campaign going after pledged delegates if the count is still close following the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary. …

Big whoop. All this story tells us are two things anyone closely following the campaign already knew. First, as I have pointed out on Open Left several times, “pledged” delegates are not really pledged, and are probably more accurately called “elected.” Second, if the campaign is undecided heading into the convention both campaigns will lobby these delegates hard to change their minds. No shock there. Anyone who watched the West Wing saw exactly that in the penultimate season finale a couple years ago. It is also exactly what happened at the last brokered convention in 1976[.] …

There is nothing new in the Politico story. It is a simple fact of politics and process that campaigns will begin to directly lobby delegates once it becomes clear we are going all the way to the convention. Any campaign that did not do just that would be caught flat-footed at a brokered convention, and be in real trouble.

But in this post, titled “Delegate Arguments Are Based on Values, Not Rules,” Bowers argues that delegate issues are moral, not legal. True, he’s talking about superdelegates, not pledged delegates — but I don’t see what difference that should make if the principle involved is respect for voters’ wishes.

This is not an argument over rules, but over values. Party leaders, also known as super delegates, should respect the wishes of party voters and caucus goers and ratify the pledged delegate leader as the nominee. Further, as part of America, Michigan and Florida voters should have a say in how our nominee is determined. Voters in those states should also not be selectively punished for the actions of their state legislatures. This means that the credentials committee should accept the delegation as sent by the Florida Democratic Party. It also means that the credentials committee should ratify a delegation from Michigan that accepts the will of voters in that state. Specifically, either a delegation of 73 Clinton nad 55 Obama, or a new delegation, determined by new caucuses, would accomplish that goal.

This isn’t about rules. All of the arguments we have seen fall within the rules. This is instead about the values we want our party to uphold. The will of the voters should be observed. Everyone should get an equal say. The best available means in 2008 to make the latter two principles happen should be respected. That is where I stand, and those are the values I want my party to uphold. I urge all Democratic primary voters and caucus participants to uphold these values as well.

And let me add one final point: if your “values” in these delegate arguments are simply to get your favorite candidate elected, or simply to nominate the candidate you think is most electable, then you suck.

Rock on; I couldn’t agree more.

The Clinton campaign put out a statement this afternoon vehemently denying the Politico story:

Hillary spokesperson Phil Singer is adamantly denying a report this morning in The Politico quoting an anonymous campaign official suggesting that the Clinton campaign will pursue Obama’s pledged delegates. Singer sends me this:

We have not, are not and will not pursue the pledged delegates of Barack Obama. It’s now time for the Obama campaign to be clear about their intentions.

Could they be more obnoxious? Demanding that Obama be “clear” about his “intentions” regarding an action neither he nor anyone on his staff had said he was going to take?

Well, Obama gave Clinton that “clarity” — and then some (via Joe Gandelman):

“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,” said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. “First, they said they’ll try to seat the non-existent delegates in Florida and Michigan, something that neutral party leaders have roundly criticized. Then, they suggested that superdelegates should consider subverting the will of the voters and the pledged delegates, which has also been strongly objected to.

“Their new strategy will be to convince delegates that were pledged by actual Democratic voters to switch sides. In their own words, ‘all the rules will be going out the window.’ Voters are already rejecting the Clinton campaign’s say-or-do-anything-to-win tactics, and this is the latest example that it’s time to turn the page on this type of politics that could severely harm our party’s chances to win the general election.”

Does that answer your question, Mr. Singer?

Joe Gandelman addresses the question that’s been on my mind: Why did the Clinton campaign leak this story to Politico in the first place, only to deny it later?

The TPM Clinton camp denial suggests the following about The Politico report:

(1) It was made up. Unlikely. News outlets and websites don’t just make up big stories and figure no one will find out it’s false.
(2) It was a trial balloon. More likely. News sources do this all the time
(3) It was to send the Obama campaign a message that they will go to the end. Possibly. But it has likely backfired. A lot of voters will wonder whether people who think like this should be trusted with the levers of power in the White House. They’ll point to the Nixon and to the present Bush administrations as administrations that pushed the envelope on executive power and created confrontations with the legislative branch.
(4) It was to assure Hillary Clinton donors that it not only isn’t over until the fat lady sings, it isn’t over until the fat lady been convinced to change her scheduled song.

And will it help Clinton’s chances at the convention? Not likely:

It’s hard to see how this story is a net plus for the Clinton campaign:

–It could force the Obama camp into denying THEY want to go after pledged delegates but it isn’t something that will convince voters to vote for Hillary.
–At the very LEAST the campaign has BURNED a reporter and an influential website by denying its widely-covered report. The Politico will eventually have to stand by its story, say it was wrong, or make up for it by future hard-hitting reporting on the Clinton campaign.
–Yesterday there was the fuss emanating from the Clinton side about Obama borrowing campaign rhetoric. Now there’s this.
–It’ll likely renew news media skepticism about comments coming from the Clinton campaign.

Kyle E. Moore, whom Joe quotes in his blog reactions section, inserts the exclamation point:

I seriously am at a loss as to how any self respecting Democrat would choose this to be our party’s nominee to the general election. Right now MSNBC is flooding the cycle with news about a bogus plagiarism charge that the Clinton camp itself won’t confirm it didn’t commit. They have sought to play the rules of the Democratic party with the expertise of a master musician not in order to see the will of the millions of people who are expected to turn out for the nominee in droves done, but so that she wins the nomination. They employed blatant race baiting in South Carolina, they have harped upon drug use, they have used increasingly dirty tactics every step of the way.
[...]
Hillary Clinton says her campaign is for the good of the country. At this point, the only thing she can do that would actually be good for this country is drop out of the race now before she tears this party apart and hands the general election to John McCain.

Nail on the head. I was unhappy at the prospect of having to vote for Clinton in the general election long before this — but I was prepared to do so if the alternative was any of the Republican candidates. Now I’m not at all sure about that anymore. Because the ethical vacuum that I am seeing in the Clinton campaign, and the disrespect — contempt, even — they appear to feel for the American people and for the democratic process are reminding me more and more every day of the administration that we have been suffering under for the last eight years.

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