While we were looking over yesterday’s Newsweek interview with Hillary Clinton which hinted at a strategy of wooing Obama’s super-delegates, we also noticed a new definitional point Hillary made that builds on the earlier rechristening of super-delegates as “automatic delegates.” Here’s the key passage …
It doesn’t look bleak at all. I have a very close race with Senator Obama. There are elected delegates, caucus delegates and superdelegates, all for different reasons, and they’re all equal in their ability to cast their vote for whomever they choose. Even elected and caucus delegates are not required to stay with whomever they are pledged to. This is a very carefully constructed process that goes back years, and we’re going to follow the process.
Now, to the best of my knowledge this is the first time I think I’ve ever heard a distinction made between “elected delegates” and “caucus delegates”. I should also note that Clinton’s spokesman Phil Singer emailed TPM Election Central to say that notwithstanding Hillary’s statement they still will not pursue Obama’s pledged delegates.
The Democratic party seems to have quite a mess on its hands with the unresolved status of Michigan and Florida’s delegates. Can the party find a solution before reaching an ugly August convention battle? We search for answers in today’s Sunday Show Roundup episode of TPMtv …
Obama’s commander-in-chief test possibly slated to be readministered?
Steven Waldman, co-founder and editor of Beliefnet, is blogging this week at TPMCafe about his new book, Founding Faith. He starts off addressing what he calls “Liberal Fallacy No. 1” — that most of the founding fathers were Deists or secular.
NYT:
Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning.
Mr. Spitzer, who was huddled with his top aides early this afternoon, had hours earlier abruptly canceled his scheduled public events for the day. He is set to make an announcement about 2:15 this afternoon at his Manhattan office.
We’re waiting for the details. But I must confess that I never cease to be amazed by stuff like this. We don’t know the precise details yet of this ‘prostitution ring involvement’ on the part of the Gov. Spitzer (D). But how exactly is it that someone who makes it his business to bust the chops of big wall street titans uses prostitutes? TPM HQ is in Chelsea. And I’m expecting the streets to be deluged at any moment now by joyously rioting stock brokers coming up from Wall Street. We do know that financial industry honchos all have big ‘security’ offices and have tons of PIs who work for them. I’m frankly shocked they didn’t smoke him out before this.
So I guess Spitzer’s future presidential prospects are looking diminished?
The NYT reports that Spitzer is Client 9 in the criminal complaint filed against the prostitution ring.