I have read a lot of complaints about Hillary's observation the other day in Philadelphia, "Pledged delegates in most states are not pledged. You know, there is no requirement that anybody vote for anybody." A lot of people who support Mr. Obama took exception to a frankly true observation.
Just so that everyone can recognize that the Change You Can Believe In looks a lot like the Old Kind of Politics of Division, Marc Ambinder observes that, "In Texas, Barack Obama's campaign is targeting delegates Hillary Clinton won from the state's precinct caucuses."
Just for the context of the story, according to Ambinder:
Nearly 90,000 delegates plan to attend the senatorial and county conventions this week; just 10 percent will move on to the state convention, which formally selects the pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
I think this phenomenon of Obama targeting Clinton delegates to the Texas state convention reflects the larger issue of Obama's argument that delegates need to express the will of the people. How is it that Obama can poach delegates on the local level and ask them at the local level to defy the "will of the people" and complain that such tactics on the national level are undemocratic. Indeed, Ambinder sees precisely the same conundrum for the Prophet of Change:
Here's an imponderable: since the caucus delegates represent the will of the voters in those precincts, doesn't any effort to get them to change their minds after the fact amount to .... well, actually, what's the difference between working the county delegates and then working the pledged delegates?
Reminds me of that great lyric from The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again":
Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.
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