Below The Beltway

You’ve got to hand it to them, the Clinton campaign certainly has chutzpah:

DURHAM, N.C. — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign yesterday tried to redefine the delegate math for securing the Democratic presidential nomination, signaling its willingness to wage a divisive battle with front-runner Sen. Barack Obama through the summer.

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, questioned Mrs. Clinton’s trustworthiness heading into today’s primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

Top Clinton aides said the nominee must win based on a tally that includes delegates from Florida and Michigan, which held January primaries that were disqualified by party rules. The campaign’s “Delegate Hub” Web site identifies 2,208 as the total delegates needed to be nominated, or 183 more than the threshold of 2,025 set by the Democratic National Committee’s rules.

“That’s what we believe is the standard for deciding this — who has the majority of the total delegates including Michigan and Florida to decide the nomination,” said Clinton strategist Geoff Garin.

The Obama campaign has long accused Team Clinton of “moving the goal posts” to avoid facing the reality that it is nearly impossible for her to catch up, and his supporters in the Democratic Party’s hierarchy reacted angrily yesterday to the idea that the 2,025-delegate finish line could be changed, especially because Mr. Obama is 273 delegates from reaching that magic number according to his campaign count.

“When you totally ignore the rules, letting these people change the outcome, that doesn’t pass the straight-face test,” Allan Katz of Tallahassee, Fla., a member of the DNC’s executive committee, told The Washington Times.

“It’s not just a question of changing the rules, it’s ignoring the reason the [DNC's] rules committee is there, to enforce the rules. You don’t get relieved of that responsibility if you don’t like the outcome,” Mr. Katz said.

Mr. Garin said “neither candidate” will have the needed delegates by June 3 when the last votes are counted in South Dakota and Montana. But Mr. Obama, should he win over a large bloc of superdelegates — elected officials and party activists who help decide the nomination — could get to 2,025 by then.

And the campaign says much the same thing on its “Delegate Hub” website:

As more voters make their choice for the Democratic nomination, there is growing interest in the facts and myths about the race to reach 2208 delegate votes - the number required for a candidate to secure the nomination with Florida and Michigan included. The Obama campaign is claiming, without precedent or justification, that automatic delegates (commonly referred to as “super delegates”) should switch to Sen. Obama en masse based on arbitrary metrics, with the aim of tilting the delegate balance in his favor. The fact is: no automatic delegate is required to cast a vote on the basis of anything other than his or her best judgment about who is the most qualified to be president.

This would seem to be a fairly strong indication that the campaign is seriously thinking about going forward with the nuclear option I talked about yesterday.

How they think they can get away with this without destroying themselves and their process is beyond me.

H/T: Donklephant