Baron Hill's Latest Hometown Problems

From the Seymour Tribune comes this bit of news:

U.S. Rep. Baron Hill's endorsement Wednesday of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has drawn criticism from his party chairman in Jackson County.

"I'm against it," Jackson County Democratic Party Chairman Jeanette Hackman said Thursday in response to Hill endorsing Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. "He (Hill) said he was not going to endorse anyone until after the primary."

Instead, Hackman is endorsing Obama's opponent, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Questioned about Hackman's comments, Hill said that's not the case.

"I never said that," Hill said. "Never did. I've always said that I took that into consideration, but the other consideration is what I think is best for our party to come together."

Hill has had many conversations in the last four weeks with Democrats across the district, including county chairmen, state representatives, mayors and committee people.

"Overall, I'd estimate 65 percent of the 100 calls or so, people favored Sen. Obama," Hill said. "The majority of county chairs favored Sen. Clinton, but the majority of all calls favored Sen. Obama."

First of all, I find it hard to believe that Baron only got called about a hundred times regarding his stance in the Democratic presidential primary.

Second, it's not a good idea to accuse any county chairman from your own party of being a liar, especially the one for your home county.

It's even less of an idea to accuse them of lying when it's pretty clear that you've lied to them and broken a promise to them (I blogged about this very point last week).

Besides, what would have helped Baron's election more?

The sixty-five people that called him urging him to vote for Obama, or the seventeen pro-Hillary Democratic county chairmen to which he made a promise that he has now broken?

Maybe, just maybe, those seventeen county chairmen would be able to muster for Baron an army of volunteers that had a lot more than sixty-five people in it.

And they might be a whole lot more motivated to help him before he lied to them, broke his promise, and (now) called one of them a liar for merely saying what he told them.