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. From the story:
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."
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:
Although Ford had won more primary delegates than Reagan, as well as plurality in popular vote, he did not have enough to secure the nomination, and as the convention opened both candidates were seen as having a chance to win. Because of this, both Ford and Reagan arrived in Kansas City before the convention opened to woo the remaining uncommitted delegates in an effort to secure the nomination. Reagan benefited from his highly committed delegates, notably "Reagan's Raiders" of the Texas delegation. They and other conservative Western and Southern delegates particularly faulted the Ford Administration's foreign policy of détente towards the Soviet Union, criticizing his signing of the Helsinki Accords and indirectly blaming him for the April 1975 Fall of Saigon. The pro-Reagan Texas delegates worked hard to persuade delegates from other states to support Reagan. Ford, meanwhile, used all of the perks and patronage of the Presidency to win over wavering delegates, including trips aboard Air Force One and personal meetings with the President himself.
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.
However, let me break a much more salient point about delegates that was first suggested here on Open Left back on Sunday. Many states, including primary states, have multi-tiered delegate selection processes that continue past the first caucus or voting that has already taken place. In these states, it is entirely possible for pledged, or "elected," delegates to change hands after the fact without any lobbying or promises of the sun, the moon and the stars. The most prominent of these is Iowa, where the Clinton and Obama campaigns will compete for the 14 Edwards delegates at the county conventions on March 15th. However, the voters will not even have the final say in who becomes a delegate even in a primary state like Pennsylvania (emphasis mine):
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign failed to file a full slate of convention delegate candidates for Pennsylvania's April 22 primary.(...)
It appears Clinton came up 10 or 11 candidates short across a number of congressional districts, including two in Philadelphia.
That's close to 10 percent of the 103 delegates to be decided by voters.
It appears the shortage would've been double that if Rendell hadn't extended last week's candidate filing deadline by a day and a half, ostensibly due to bad weather.(...)
But Clinton's faux pas is more of an image problem than a practical one.
Under Democratic Party rules (and does any organization on the planet have more rules or more complex rules?) a presidential candidate winning in a congressional district gets delegates from that district (assigned at a later date) whether he or she files slates delegates or not.
Do you catch that? The delegates are assigned at a later date, and not directly by the voters. This is the case not only in Pennsylvania, but in many other states and jurisdictions around the country. Because of this, I put a question into both the Obama and Clinton campaigns to see if they had organizers still working on the process in states with multi-tiered delegate process. The Clinton campaign confirmed to me that yes, they do in fact still have organizers in states with multi-tiered delegate selection processes, even if those states have already held primaries or caucuses. The Obama campaign declined to comment, but indicated that information on the subject would be available to the public later this week. Still, despite their lack of comment, I would be stunned if they were not organizing in these multi-tiered states while the Clinton campaign continued to do so.
So, there is a real pledged delegate story for you. Of course the campaigns will target pledged delegates in the event of a brokered convention. What is more interesting is that the Clinton campaign, and probably both campaigns, are still competing over pledged delegates in a number of states that have already held primaries or caucuses because the actual delegates themselves have not been selected yet. So, if the campaign continues to grind forward, get ready to start watching county, district and state party conventions where the delegate selection process will continue even after the first votes or delegates are counted. Our return to a 19th century political process continues. |
