Texas Rules Spell Trouble for Hillary

The Washington Post has the story:

What Clinton aides discovered is that in certain targeted districts, such as Democratic state Sen. Juan Hinojosa's heavily Hispanic Senate district in the Rio Grande Valley, Clinton could win an overwhelming majority of votes but gain only a small edge in delegates. At the same time, a win in the more urban districts in Dallas and Houston -- where Sen. Barack Obama expects to receive significant support -- could yield three or four times as many
delegates.

"What it means is, she could win the popular vote and still lose the race for delegates," Hinojosa said yesterday. "This system does not necessarily represent the opinions of the population, and that is a serious problem."

One-third of the delegates will be chosen in a caucus which is good news for Obama given his strength in that format.

Under rules described in the 37-page Texas delegate selection plan, two-thirds of the state's 228 delegates will be chosen based on the vote in each of 31 state Senate districts. The remaining delegates will be chosen based in part on the outcome of caucuses held on election night after the polls close.

Hillary's people are worried that her working-class supporters may not have the ability to vote and to attend a caucus compared to Obama's more affluent supporters.

It gets better for Obama. It looks like Texas' gerrymandered districts will work in his favor according to the Huffington Post:

While drawing district lines in such a way that ensured victory for a Republican state senator, the Republicans also made sure that the Democrats in each new district were divided between moderate whites and/or African-American Hispanic minorities. The thinking was that these competing Democratic constituencies would cancel each other out--and that is exactly what is likely to happen come March 4th, because by putting a bit of black in as many state senate districts as possible, the Republicans have blunted the chances for Hillary Clinton to take a majority in districts that have 4 delegates to offer. Most of the 31 state senate districts that will determine the Texas primary deliver 4 delegates. Therefore, Hillary Clinton will be hard-pressed to find a way to a clear-cut victory in Texas.

Hillary really needs to take a large majority of Texas' delegates in order to make up her deficit in the delegate race. It increasingly looks like she won't be able to do that.

Of course, if she fails to score a big win, we can always rely on Mark Penn to discount the Texas contest as insignificant because of their strange rules and gerrymandered districts.