Facing possible Clinton loss in Texas, campaign has "potentially incendiary" plans to insure nomination

Although the delegate count depends on many variables, the New York Times puts Obama substantially ahead.

A delegate count by The New York Times, including projections from caucuses where delegates have not yet been chosen, showed Mr. Obama with a 113-delegate lead over Mrs. Clinton: 1,095 to 982.

The desperation of the Clinton campaign means things could get really nasty within the Democratic party.

With every delegate precious, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers also made it clear that they were prepared to take a number of potentially incendiary steps to build up Mrs. Clinton’s count. Top among these, her aides said, is pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their primaries in January in defiance of Democratic Party rules.

When NAACP leader Julian Bond's letter to Howard Dean was made public yesterday, there were serious doubts at first that it had been sent by the NAACP leader.  Some thought it was a hoax.  Bond writes of "obsticles" to voting, casting "aspertions,"  and needing a solution to this "delima."  But apparently the odd letter is the real thing -- the guy just doesn't have spellcheck. 

It looks as though the NAACP's assistance may have been, um, requested by the Clintons.  The Clinton campaign -- now looking desperate -- wants to make sure it will get Florida and Michigan delegates even though this means breaking party rules.  The NAACP, possibly the campaign's surrogate, is demanding that those delegates be recognized.

Julian Bond, the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called for the delegates to be seated, saying failure to do so would amount to disenfranchising minority voters in those states. But on Wednesday, such a move was denounced by the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, who said many people in those states did not go the polls because they assumed their votes would not count.

Nor are Ohio and Texas in the bag.  Even if Clinton wins in both states, she won't win all their delegates.  And she needs every last one of them.   

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign showed signs of being buffeted by conflicting forces as it sought to grapple with a dwindling number of options. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers, after some discussion about whether to focus exclusively on Ohio and Texas for the next three weeks, finally decided to send her for three days this week to Wisconsin, which votes next Tuesday.

Texas is now looking as though it's no sure thing.  Texas has its own rules.

In Texas,  [campaign strategist Mark] Penn said Mrs. Clinton would be helped by the Latino vote — which he said could ultimately be as much as 40 percent of the electorate.

But Mrs. Clinton faces another problem there in the form of that state’s unusual delegation allocation rules. Delegates are allocated to state senatorial districts based on Democratic voter turn-out in the last election. Bruce Buchanan, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at Austin, noted that in the last election, turnout was low in predominantly Hispanic districts and unusually high in urban African-American districts.

So the greatest number of Texas delegates may go to Obama.

If the Clinton campaign persists in fighting right down to the line, it may put a Democratic win in November at risk.

The final Democratic primary contests are in early June; Montana and South Dakota vote June 3, and Puerto Rico four days later. It would then be almost three months until the Democratic convention, a period in which, if enough superdelegates have not expressed a firm preference to decide the outcome, the party could face a period of intense horse trading or worse.

Meanwhile, the likely Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, would have a long period to rally his fractious party to his side and hone his attacks on the Democrats.

Comments

[laurie]

If the democratic party seats Michigan and Florida without running a new primary or caucus, the democratic party would lose all credibility and instead be the flagship banner for all that the Clintons represent: Winning at all costs, honest or dishonest.