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Posted Feb 1, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC · edited
I really don't think this is going to come into play too often because he's so low in the numbers that they would have to shift a decent amount of people to him. Plus it may backfire on Clinton. A reason some O'Malley supporters don't support Clinton is that they view her as untrustworthy/dishonest. They may switch over to Bernie to spite her if she tries that.
Well yes, after they declare O'Malley is not viable, Sanders supporters could just wait a bit to see what both O'Malley and Clinton camps start doing.
You'd think at minimum they'd educate the Sanders people to at least know what was going on if Clinton supporters start jumping ship to build up O'Malley's group. Could then use that to convince the O'Malley people that that's no way to get support, that they were just being used by Clinton, and to have them come to Sanders group...
he's so low in the numbers that they would have to shift a decent amount of people to him
I don't think the math works that way. In a 3 delegate precinct O'Malley could be at 1%, and after being told O'Malley was not viable, Clinton could split in half and go from 33% down to 17% to give 16% to O'Malley and make him viable at 17% also. That would then be 3 viable candidates, 1 delegate to each. Otherwise if Clinton didn't do that, Sanders would have 66% and get 2 delegates.
And the higher O'Malley is, the fewer people Clinton would need to send over. So if O'Malley was at 10%, Clinton could be as low as 24%, and it would still work for them to send 7% to O'Malley.
Bottom line is the tactic works to rob the higher percentage candidate of delegates in 345 precincts. That's a lot. I don't see how they can ignore this the way they're indicating in the media that they have no plans to do likewise...
BOTH campaigns will be using this strategy to their advantage.
Everything I've seen has been Sanders people repudiating the tactic and saying they wouldn't do such a thing. Everyone on reddit here who says 'Don't worry I'm sure Sanders camp knows about it and has something planned' has not provided any proof of it. So I'm not sure where this presumption comes from...
Unfortunately, if Clinton supporters are doing this, there really is nothing that the Sanders campaign can do about it.
In my time at this subreddit, I've read nothing but nice things about Iowans. Maybe many Hillary supporters will object to this tactic on moral/ethical grounds. But, sadly, politics and the desire to win can sometimes bring out the worst in people.
This is true. Which is why if Clinton is denying delegates in these 345 precincts where he is above 50% or 62.5%, the only thing to do to even things up is for Sanders to do the exact same thing in the 345 precincts where she is above 50% or 62.5%...
Yeah I don't know about that, it sounds like Obama was very effective because of this tactic, as well as the allowed then (but now currently not allowed) rule that people could caucus anywhere, so he had supporters drive long distances to shore up weak precincts.
If Iowan's were willing to do both of those in the past, I don't see any reason they would not be willing to do so now.