In yet another move reminiscent of TV's Nellie Olson, a high-ranking official in the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton has told Roger Simon of Politico that they will go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination.
It reeks of desperation and mark. my. words..., If Obama is leading in the delegate and popular vote counts come convention time, and she wins the nomination by man-handling Obama's delegates, she may very well lose my vote.
And no...I'm not kidding.
Imagine for a minute, my fellow Democrats who are backing Sen. Clinton, if it was Obama trailing Clinton and the Obama team was trying to steal delegates to do a side run to the nomination. You would be so royally pissed off your heads would be ready to explode.
I understand that in past conventions delegates formerly pledged to another candidate have switched their vote on the convention floor. But here's the thing: In the last several cycles, the nominee of the party was apparent before the primary voting was over (meaning they had more than enough delegates to secure the nomination) and thus the convention turned into a coronation. There were very few delegates on the convention floor pledged to other candidates, and it was those delegates who switched their votes to the eventual nominee.
Hillary Clinton's miserably run campaign is beginning to lose their air of inevitability and now they're in full panic mode. It's unbecoming of a former First Lady, it's bad form for a sitting United States Senator, and this sort of threat is exactly what we would expect from the Karl Rove-Fascist wing of the Republican Party.
Update: In response to reader email...yes, if Obama is behind in the popular and delegate counts then Hillary should be the nominee. And yes, if Obama tries anything similar to what the Clinton campaign is threatening, I would have rethink my vote for him as well.
But, that a key figure in the Clinton campaign is making this threat publicly says so much about the sleazy campaign she is running; and, I hate to say it, but it also says a lot about the Nixonian ways she might run a Hillary Clinton White House.
At a time when the Democrats are sitting pretty for an extended run at the top, do we really want to go down THAT route?
