Image Problem
Feb 19th, 2008 at 11:04 am by Susie
Via Duncan, this news that the Clinton campaign didn’t file a full slate of Pennsylvania delegates.
However:
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.
UPDATE: Actually, not that simple. Read on!
UPDATE: Wrong. The delegates will simply be appointed after the priimary.
Ready on Day 1, and not a moment before? Being short by 10% of the delegates needed seems like a pretty substantial shortage.
Doesn’t seem that complicated to me. All you have to do is vote for the uncommitted Democratic delegates, since they’re the Clinton people.
I don’t know. All I know is that the Clinton campaign has been surprised by a lot of things. I just heard them talking about the reason that Hilllary is likely to win fewer delegates in Texas is because her campaign wasn’t familiar with how the delegates are awarded there.
What on earth are they paying the likes of Mark Penn for, if not to be intimately aware of how all these things work, and be prepared for surprises, and able to respond to them effectively? Someone’s been asleep at the wheel there.
Mark Penn isn’t the guy who handles stuff like this. It would be the person running her field organization, whoever that is.
I don’t think people realize how segregated all these campaign functions are.
BTW, Hilzoy says the PA stuff is no big deal:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/politics/index.html