Obama Delegate Reversal Shows He’s a People-Powered CandidatePaul Hogarthbyline‚ Apr. 11‚ 2008Barack Obama proved last night that he can be held accountable. On April 9th, the Obama campaign had angered his California supporters by removing 950 people from the upcoming delegate caucuses on Sunday. With a record number of Democratic activists running for delegate this year and with the delegate count at the National Convention actually making a difference, this move was condemned as blatantly undemocratic. Campaigns can legally remove such candidates for no reason, and the Hillary Clinton camp also removed about 50 names from their list of delegate candidates. The scale that Obama did it, however, was unprecedented – and threatened the notion that he is a people-powered candidate. But after overwhelming pressure from the grassroots that such a move was unacceptable, the Obama camp reversed course yesterday – instructing the California Democratic Party to allow anyone who filed to be an Obama delegate to run. By doing so, he effectively said: “this is your campaign, not mine.” |