Clinton protests the Texas Two-Step

Hillary Clinton seems determined to alienate the Democratic party leadership in Texas, just days before Tuesday's do-or-die combo primary/caucus.

If you're serious about a candidate in Texas, you cast a provisional vote at the primary (126 delegates), then attend a caucus afterwards (67 delegates). The Clinton campaign evidently feels that caucuses favor Obama because only hardcore Democrats (who prefer Obama) attend them.

In other words, the caucuses give more power to voters who are willing to invest more time in the process. And this is bad because... ?

So, Clinton's campaign is challenging some of the rules. (The funny thing is that some of her campaign advisers actually helped devise some of those rules in the first place.)

The campaign claims that it is merely questioning some details of the rules, and not threatening legal action. However, it seems that the party leaders in Texas got a very different impression, and they have clearly taken offense.

Now, I can understand wanting to clear a few things up beforehand, given that the vote may be close... but it sounds more as though she's expecting them to try to pull something over on her. It might be smarter to simply encourage (beg) voters to attend the caucuses, or better yet inspire them to do so. But instead of earning votes by impressing people, she's harassing the party leadership, which could cost her some superdelegate votes - not just in Texas, but anywhere there's a superdelegate who's on the fence.

We'll see.