I know pledged delegates are not required to stay loyal to whom they are pledged but I am 100% against any switching (even though in this case as an Obama supporter it favors my candidate).
Yes, Clinton has been the only on to push this meme in the past and now that it has happened to her it plays well to my inner juvenile sense of irony, but its still not right.
Pledged delegate switches unofrtunately lend credibility to the 'on to the convention' meme. The loser in the delegate count can point to these examples as justification. They can claim that they can try all summer long to try and flip delegates as the political winds shift. So switching like this allows the 'no vote is really cast until the convention' meme to take hold and keeps the primary open to the convention. Not good at all.
I hope Obama asks this pledged delegate (and the previous one) that he appreciates their consideration but that they should hold true to their original pledge through the first round of voting at the convention. And if a second vote is needed he would gladly accept it then.
Me Too
These are how caucuses work, there is no switching involved, Clinton just failed to get enough of her state-level delegates to turn out at the next level of caucusing. It goes both ways too, on election night it looked like Obama was on track to win the Texas caucus 38-29, but on the next round of caucusing Hillary's state delegates showed up in greater numbers and it is estimated to be 37-30 now. The actual national delegates are not selected until later, this is completely different from what happened in Maryland. This is why some news organizations didn't even list caucus delegates after Super Tuesday, because the results weren't set in stone (unlike primaries).
In any case, if Clinton wants to argue that the Maryland switcher means she should continue to press her case (since pledged delegates can switch at any time like superdelegates), she is ignoring the fact that switchers almost always go towards the presumptive nominee.
Thank you.
doubt very much that Obama did such an honorable thing as asking for their vote switch on a second ballot.
I also agree, but I am not sure how to reign in the pledged delegates. If we require them to keep their vote up until the first floor vote at the convention then that might be a problem if there is a candidate that dies or is incapacitated or if there is a candidate who refuses to leave the race after a scandal.
It seems to me the solution may be worse than the problem. To date there has been only one pledged delegate to switch his vote. I don't agree with his decision but it one out of 3,200 isn't so bad.
