Redstate

More or less. There's the vague chance that somebody will have the mother-wit to listen.

By Moe Lane Posted in 2008 | Rooting For Injuries | The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

A very small vague chance.

Anyway, Karl Rove has discovered one of the most potent, richest, most tingly joys of the universe: giving good advice to people who are predisposed to not believe a single word that you say. If you've never had it happen to you, it's an amazing experience. You combine the virtue of speaking sooth - even when it's against your best interest - with the relaxing, almost-smug pleasure of knowing that you are almost certainly doing so in perfect safety. I spent a large part of 2004 in this state, and let me tell you: it's great stuff. They should bottle it.

How to Win in a Knife Fight
Karl Rove

After the last Democratic Primary is held in early June, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama will have enough votes from delegates elected in caucuses or primaries to be declared the nominee. Obama would have to win 76 percent and Clinton 98 percent of the 535 delegates that are at stake in the final eight contests. Neither will happen.

Both sides are frantically wooing the 330 uncommitted superdelegates, who will decide the race. Obama supporters emphasize that he's ahead in the popular vote and argue that superdelegates should respect the wishes of the primary voters (except in the states he lost, of course). They suggest Obama would do better with independents and Republicans in the fall; they argue Hillary Clinton is a flawed, secretive candidate who was wrong on Iraq and dissembles about her experience. Clinton partisans point to her victories in big battleground states and say superdelegates should act in the best interests of the party. They paint Barack Obama as an inexperienced, untested, overly ambitious candidate with a thin résumé who will fall to the Republican attack machine.

It's highly unlikely that these undecided superdelegates will tilt one way or the other before June, unless one candidate reels off a string of strong, unexpected victories. There has been talk of a "superdelegate primary" that month, whereby they'd be forced to make a decision and bring the increasingly vitriolic race to a close. But the Clinton camp in particular is talking about the "months" to come until a decision is reached, and it's even possible the Democratic nominee won't be decided until the Denver convention in late August.

Via AoSHQ, and read on.

The advice itself is pretty prosaic; mostly technical issues, and things that any competent campaign should know already. Of course, neither Party is really competent at dealing with national conventions that aren't rubber-stamped, but the information's there in the books to be read, and Rove's done his homework. Each of the five rules is illustrated with helpful examples from the last century, and is used to show how the theoretical principle works in the real world. This is general-level stuff, mind you: it's not really meant for the professionals. It's meant for the amateurs who are starting to pay attention to the possibility that the Denver convention might devolve into one glorious, chaotic mess.

It really is a pity - for them - that said amateurs are too blinded by their rather simplistic political theology to take Rove at all seriously. Everything that Karl suggested is much more obvious to the cynical, vastly more experienced Clinton campaign than it is to the one that Obama's thrown together: if it goes to the convention, Hillary's people will tie up Barack's in procedural knots without the latter ever quite knowing what happened to them. And if she can win the primary vote, she will go ahead and win the primary vote, because she and the Democratic Party knows that its left wing has nowhere else it can go, and that the African-American vote has nowhere else it wants to go. Nonsense about how either group will stay home is just that: nonsense. They caved every time that their bluff's been called in the past: who really believes that they'll do the same now?

Which is why this is such a funny article. The very people that Rove is offering good, general convention advice to are the very people most unconstitutionally incapable of following it. And he must know it, which is why he probably laughed as hard writing the article as I did reading it...

Moe Lane