Centerfield

Localblogging: Texas Clinton Campaign: Texas Primaries Unfair Because Obama Supporters Care More?

I've been wanting to get this out the door since Friday.

The Clinton campaign used language that sounded awfully like a lawsuit threat to the Texas Democratic Party over its handling of the Texas primary system, because they felt it disadvantaged their voters. The Texas primary is a hybrid system: 55% of the votes are awarded via traditional ballot. 30% are exercised by whomever bothers to show up at the caucuses, and the rest are superdelegates. The caucuses are held immediately after the polls close and the last voter in line at the given poll has voted - in theory, 7:15, though it could really be much later. At that point, it's rather like other caucuses, elsewhere, I guess.

The TX Democratic Party wrote a letter to both parties, warning, no doubt rightly, that a lawsuit would probably alienate much of the high turnout and Dem-side enthusiasm we've been seeing. We Dems like our lawyers, but not THAT much.

That means that voters with lots of either time or interest in the result can get an extra 1/2-vote, basically. I'd guess the Clinton campaign's panic came from the caucus source of their first loss (Iowa), and from what losing 11 straight will do to you. There were also (uncomfirmed) internet-rumors that the Clinton campaign was disorganized about Texas caucuses, though, if it was ever true, it seemed to've been fixed by the time I started on this story, on Friday. The hubby was getting out the caucus message in his TX appearances, and pleas to caucus and be precinct captain and various kinds of help were showing on the Clinton Texas website.

The Profesora and I have been planning to caucus for three weeks, because I was curious to see them in action; I'm hoping to blog about it. This is the first time either've us have caucused. We went to a Democrats' training session, which was more than a little confusing.

The wording the article used to refer to the threat is, "threatened to sue over the party's complicated delegate selection process." The Profesora remarked that that seemed fair enough... And the mixture of caucus and seems to me to favor those with time and/or energy unfairly to me. But it's the wrong time for a lawsuit about it. And such a lawsuit threat should've been made to the state of Texas, because both parties have the same kind of caucus system. At the least, you'd think they could've had the taste to make the threat to the actual party running the state....