Wonderful!
Posted on 02/19/2008 6:37:14 AM PST by seanmerc
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.
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.”
Rules of good behavior, maybe. But, in fact, the actual rules of the party allow for such switching. 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.”
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer told me Monday he assumes the Obama campaign is going after delegates pledged to Clinton, though a senior Obama aide told me he knew of no such strategy.
But one neutral Democratic operative said to me: “If you are Hillary Clinton, you know you can’t get the nomination just with superdelegates without splitting the party. You have to go after the pledged delegates.”
Winning with superdelegates is potentially party-splitting because it could mean throwing out the choice of the elected delegates and substituting the choice of 795 party big shots.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has warned against it. “I think there is a concern when the public speaks and there is a counter-decision made to that,” she said. “It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided.”
Donna Brazile, who was Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000 and is a member of the DNC, said recently: “If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit [the DNC]. I feel very strongly about this.”
On Sunday, Doug Wilder, the mayor of Richmond and a former governor of Virginia, went even further, predicting riots in the streets if the Clinton campaign were to overturn an Obama lead through the use of superdelegates.
“There will be chaos at the convention,” Wilder told Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation.”
“If you think 1968 was bad, you watch: In 2008, it will be worse.”
But would getting pledged delegates to switch sides be any less controversial? Perhaps not. They were chosen by voters, but they were chosen to back a particular candidate.
And it is unlikely that many people, including the pledged delegates themselves, know that pledged delegates actually can switch.
Nor would it be easy to get them to switch.
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.
Better watch your back delegates. Those FBI files may come home to roost yet!
The Clintons are pure evil and filth. They cannot win ANYTHING straight up. Gutter slime methodology will ALWAYS be their hallmark -— run them out of Washington. Best thing that could happen to our political scene.
I get the feeling that the prostitutes in Denver are gonna be rich after the Dem convention.
“You go, girl.”
>> I get the feeling that the prostitutes in Denver are gonna be rich after the Dem convention.
Would you be talking about the prostitutes on the street outside, or the ones inside the convention center?
“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.”
To the Democrats a pledge means absolutely nothing. A Democrat’s word or promise mean absolutely nothing also.
Both. There will be lots of people selling themselves both inside and out.
Just confirms what we already know. There is no sleaze limit which Hill and Bill will not surpass in order to better their fat and aging hearts.
- Tip for dims: if you are supporting Obama, don't go to the park to eat lunch. It's very unhealthy.
I PLEDGE TO POST THE TRUTH ABOUT HILLARY MARXIST CLINTON AND COMRAD BILL!
ABC 20/20 Corroborates Peter Paul Against Hillary ClintonSeven years ago Peter Paul began whistleblowing to the government and alerting the media of numerous illegalities committed by Hillary and Bill Clinton in order to win Hillary’s first election to public office. The multi-million dollar donor to Hillary’s Senate campaign that caused Hillary’s finance director to be indicted and tried in May, 2005, for hiding his contributions, and whose complaint to the FEC resulted in a finding that Hillary’s campaign broke the law resulting in the only FEC fine imposed against Hillary’s campaign, will begin the discovery process leading to a trial in Los Angeles later this year of the Clintons and others for destroying Paul’s public company.
The Case Management Conference hearing in Paul v Clinton et al on February 21, in Los Angeles Superior Court will finally set a trial date in the long delayed civil fraud case and it will set a schedule for discovery that will include the sworn depositions of the entire Clinton family and the Clinton hierarchy of the Democratic Party.
ABC 20/20 Shows Hillary Clinton is the “Liar” In Illegalities Exposed By Top Donor Peter Paul
http://www.peterfpaul.com/category/current-affairs/
Editor: Cliff Kincaid
Associate Editor: Notra Trulock
2003 Report #
15 August 11, 2003
Of all the Hillary Clinton scandals and cover-ups, none is more significant than her attempt to whitewash her own personal transformation from Goldwater girl to Marxist. No mainstream media organization has examined how she is determined in her new book to keep people in the dark about what Hillary biographer, the late Barbara Olson, described as her “roots in Marxism.”
“In her formative years,” explained Olson, “Marxism was a very important part of her ideology...”
Olson’s important 1999 book, Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1999), remains the best account of Hillary’s communist connections and emergence as a “budding Leninist” who “understood the Leninist concept of acquiring, accumulating and maintaining political power at any cost.”
As an example, Hillary’s book gripes that the end to her illegal closed-door health-care task-force meetings, where a socialized medicine scheme was hatched, was the result of her opponents citing an “obscure federal law” in court. Hillary, a lawyer, never wanted the law to get in her way.
http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/hcvrillary.htm
Wonderful!
Now THAT’S a popcorn ball!
Popcorn alert.
oh, goodie..........
The Clintons are evil. They will lie, cheat and steal in this election. They have no respect for DNC rules so you know they will have no respect for the Constitution.
And I can’t believe some Freepers are actually considering voting FOR this beast. We must stop them now and save ourselves in November.
First, I fail to see how convincing regular delegates to switch sides would be any more “acceptable” than having the superdelegates pick the winner. If a delegate goes against the person they were elected to vote for, they are “denying the will of the people”.
Second, if the democrats didn’t think it was a good idea for “superdelegates” to override the will of the people, they shouldn’t have HAD superdelegates to begin with. The entire point of superdelegates WAS to override the will of the people, because the people weren’t trusted after picking so many losers.
The advantage the Democrats have is if, after Obama says gets enough delegates to win, he has some scandal, he might not think it’s bad enough to pull out, but the superdelegates can get together and overrule his delegates at the convention to pick a better candidate.
It would be funny if they decided to push John Edwards as a “reconciliation candidate”.
The Republican party I think requires actual pledged delegates to stick with their pledge for at least one round, but we also have a lot of “unpledged” elected delegates, who have preferences but aren’t bound to those preferences.
I wish their convention were in Chicago or Atlanta. What a riot that would be!
Question is, will the people HIllary is bent on disenfranchising know they have been disenfranchized? Hopefully they are smarter now than when Mondale/Hart ran.
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