A field guide to types of delegates.

The New Yorker’s precocious Ryan Lizza has nice McCain mash note up this week. I particularly like the cameos by former Bush hand Steve Schmidt:

Steve Schmidt, one of the campaign’s chief strategists, is usually perched on a ledge in a corner of the lounge. He is thirty-seven, has a shaved head, and often wears a Bluetooth earpiece,

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From an email:

Given the number of calls regarding pledged delegates, I thought this background information might be helpful. As always, please call if you have questions.

Best,
Stacie Paxton
DNC Press Secretary

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Pledged Delegates Vs. “Bound” Delegates

Delegates to the Democratic National Convention who are

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First all, the Clinton campaign has said it will not try to poach Obama’s pledged delegates.

Second of all: In the whirlwind of research I did trying to figure out how you’d go about poaching anyway, I came across an interesting coda to the true fact that “pledged” delegates can vote for whomever they want. They totally can. But

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More Hillary’s more traditional path to the nomination:

My bottom line take: The turf looks fairly favorable to Clinton, provided she wins Ohio and Texas March 4. [And if she manages to win Wisconsin, something Barone admits is “optimistic” early on. — amc] Not favorable enough, perhaps, for her to overtake Obama in “pledged”

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I would really like to know what’s involved in “getting pledged delegates to switch sides.” Is it intimidation or just bribery?

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination. This strategy was confirmed to me

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No one’s buying it, not even the Republicans. Also? “Lifting language” only counts if Barack does it:

I asked Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson and Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass, if they could assure the public that neither Clinton nor McGovern has ever done what Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, did when he used the rhetoric of

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If only Karen had posted her helpful explanation in time for the Clinton campaign to, you know, see if her “must-win state” was, er, winnable.

Supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are worried that convoluted delegate rules in Texas could water down the impact of strong support for her among Hispanic voters there, creating a new

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The Washington Post has a couple of interesting stories today about Texas’ bizarre system for choosing its 228 Democratic convention delegates. It’s a combination primary (which Clinton’s team says will be good for her, given her longer relationships in the state) and caucuses (which Obama expects to win, if earlier contests in this …

My old friend Jeff Cohen sends sad word of the passing of Mack Sisk, who was a fixture in San Antonio journalism and something of a mentor to young reporters back in the days when Jeff (now editor of the Houston Chronicle) and I were starting out at the city’s afternoon paper, the now-defunct San Antonio Light.

Those were pretty wild …

Science is something that rarely gets talked about in a presidential election campaign, at least not in any substantive way.

And yet, one lesson of the Bush Administration is that a President’s approach to the subject can leave an impact that will last decades, maybe even centuries, after he is out of office. President Bush spent the …

I disagree with Ana’s assertion that the SEIU endorsement doesn’t matter, because endorsements “don’t actually get people out to the polls.”

That is precisely what unions do, and their endorsements are far from merely an “imprimatur,” as Ana suggests. Union endorsements are very different from, say, those of celebrities or politicians. …