Clemency suggests

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What is Hillary planning?

James Forsyth

Saturday, 8th March 2008

Last month, there was a terrible fuss when a story appeared suggesting that the Clinton campaign was going to start going after Obama’s elected delegates in its attempt to win the nomination. The theory was that individual delegates would be induced into going against the will of the people who elected them and that could help Hillary to the 2024 delegates needed to win the nomination. In the end, the Clinton campaign had to quickly pledge not to do this in an attempt to kill the story which played perfectly into the narrative that the Clintons would do anything—absolutely anything—to win. So one wonders what Hillary is thinking when she observes to Newsweek that, Does this mean that the Clintons are once again going to try and peel away Obama’s pledged delegates? The most charitable explanation for her remarks is that she was just ruminating on the system but it is more likely that she was looking ahead to a second ballot when, if this does go all the way to the convention, the craziness will really kick in.

“Even elected and caucus delegates are not required to stay with whomever they are pledged to.”

Meanwhile, Obama tells Time that But what this ignores is that there is a decent chance that while he might have won more delegates, Hillary could have gained more popular votes. Before this race is settled, we are all going to have to become experts on convention procedure.

“I've said throughout this campaign, this is about who has won [more] primaries, caucuses, popular votes, delegates, I think that's a perfectly good way to resolve things.”