News out of Texas today has Hillary's campaign exploring methods of marginalizing the rules of engagement for the Texas Caucimary. Those methods would include suing the Texas DC for enacting rules that are inherently unfair.
This is not the first time that the Clinton campaign has attempted to change the rules midstream. While trying to get the Michigan and Florida delegates seated at the convention should immediately come to mind. The campaign also supported a lawsuit by a labor organization in Nevada that sought to disenfranchise voters whose polling place happened to be at one of the Casinos on the strip.
Politics is a nasty business and I'd argue that HRC is not helping herself by allowing her campaign and her surrogates to engage in these 'black ops' in such an open way. It makes her look desperate and helps the Obama campaign's label - 'She-will-do-anything-to-win' stick like a scarlet badge of honor.
The politics of campaigns today, more so than at anytime in our history, is becoming more immediately transparent. In the past, these stories of intrigue within campaigns, backroom deals, and lawsuits over seating delegates would take longer get out. Blame the 24 hour news cycle and the 60 second blog cycle if you don't like it. This requires candidates and their surrogates to be even more vigilant and above the fray - everything they say to anyone will likely hit a blog or YouTube - somewhere. How this campaign could be so oblivious to this reality is just beyond me. It might be that Harold Ickes, 67, doesn't really get the blogosphere. It might be that others at the highest levels within the campaign don't really understand the netroots either.
This is a plea to the Clinton campaign to drop the side show and simply fight for delegates (pledged and super) in a fair way. Stop the posturing on Michigan and Florida, stop the rhetoric on Texas, and stop pushing the message on shifting super delegates. It just makes the campaign look weak.
Many campaigns have trotted out a 'do-anything-to-win' mentality: Kennedy in Chicago, Nixon's plummers, etc - but that does not make it right.
So what do you think - if you were running - would you do ANYTHING to win?