Chatham Dems

This is an AP photo of Rahsheim Wright’s boss, Jeffrey Bermann, Director of Delegate Selection for the Obama campaign. Ben Smith and Avi Zenilman write in Politico:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had just declared victory in the Nevada caucuses when most campaign reporters heard Jeffrey Berman’s voice for the first and only time.

“Obama had a majority in the district that had an odd number of delegates, so he won an extra seat,” Berman told the puzzled press; the Associated Press delegate expert, on the call, promised to revise his count.

Obama’s Nevada delegate victory was widely viewed at the time as a curiosity, an asterisk to Clinton’s win. But in February, as Obama amassed delegates despite losing big states, the shape of the race became clear: The name of the game was delegates.

As the Clinton campaign has found itself losing, it has sought to change the rules of the primary season. But, as David Axelrod repeatedly says, if the rules had been different, the Obama people would have run a different type of campaign. The rules were clear: amass 2025 delegates and you win the primary.

Twenty-five years ago, Berman began to study the obscure, and generally unrewarding, field of Democratic delegate selection. This involves mastering the rules that govern delegate selection from how to get the candidate on the ballot in each state to the rules of a floor fight at the convention. Since the rules in each state are different, this is a mind-bogglingly complex operation. Berman understands it from soup to nuts and has taught what he knows to staff in each state, including our own Rahsheim.

In contrast, the Clinton campaign’s equivalent is a former New York State Party official, who did not not know anything about delegate selection when the primaries began.

The whole story illustrates the differences between the two campaigns. Clinton chose friends and loyalists for her campaign. Obama chose people with the expertise he needed. This strikes me as a good omen for an Obama administration which would have to tackle some of the toughest problems this country has ever faced.

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