.@MartinOMalley: HELL NO to role of caucus kingmaker – thinks supporters will skip 2nd ballot, snub Hillary/Bernie https://t.co/1IOZDBQlEv
— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) January 31, 2016
Can't we poll all twenty of them and find out definitively? https://t.co/YwWLGUgLq2
— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) January 31, 2016
CNN lays out the strategy behind “How Martin O’Malley Could Decide Who Wins Iowa”:
… While O’Malley’s core support is small, those backing him tend to be committed caucus-goers who understand the process, would never skip it and know how to cut deals, several Democratic strategists said.
And the Clinton and Sanders camps have each made a point of identifying O’Malley’s backers and persistently reaching out in an effort to become their second choice.
It’s in part an effort by Clinton to reverse a mistake of her 2008 campaign. Then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama identified supporters of lower-polling candidates like Chris Dodd and Joe Biden and courted them heavily, while Clinton’s campaign purged other candidates’ supporters from its contact lists…
If the race is a nail-biter, the O’Malley voters could be particularly influential in precincts with odd numbers of delegates — 11, rather than 10, for example — because they could tip what looks like a tie into a one-delegate victory there.
“In a tight race, as someone starts getting the edge on that second choice pick, it could make all the difference in the world,” said Brad Anderson, a Democratic strategist who led Obama’s re-election effort in Iowa in 2012.
The Clinton campaign even has an app for volunteers to count the number of supporters for each candidate and send caucusers to O’Malley’s side if it keeps Sanders from winning an extra delegate…
So, you can’t say the HRClinton campaign didn’t learn anything from the Obama people! (Whether picking the potential leader of 310 million people should come down to 11 random Iowans is an argument for another day.) Buzzfeed describes the eleventh-dimensional chess maneuvers in more detail:
… A precinct captain, Jerome Lehtola, confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the campaign has trained precinct captains to release supporters to O’Malley if the move can make him “viable” without hurting Clinton. A Clinton aide said the campaign has trained more than 4,000 volunteer precinct captains to handle a host of different scenarios, including ones where caucus-goers are released to or recruited from another camp…
Late Night Open Thread: Martin O’Malley, Not A ‘Kingmaker’Post + Comments (49)