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Florida, Michigan delegates will get half-votes
[Quote:]
Democratic Party leaders agreed Saturday to seat Michigan and Florida delegates with half-votes at this summer’s convention with a compromise that left Barack Obama on the verge of the nomination but riled Hillary Rodham Clinton backers who threatened to fight to the August convention.
“Hijacking four delegates is not a good way to start down the path of party unity,” said adviser Harold Ickes.
[..]
Clinton’s camp insisted Obama shouldn’t get any pledged delegates in Michigan since he chose not to put his name on the ballot, and she should get 73 pledged delegates with 55 uncommitted. Obama’s team insisted the only fair solution was to split the pledged delegates in half between the two campaigns, with 64 each.
The committee agreed on a compromise offered by the Michigan Democratic Party that would split the difference, allowing Clinton to take 69 delegates and Obama 59. Each delegate would get half a vote at the convention, according to the deal.
The deal passed 19-8. Thirteen members of the committee had endorsed Clinton for president, so she wasn’t even able to keep her supporters together.
Allan Katz, a Rules Committee member and Obama supporter, said the Obama campaign had enough votes on the committee to support the campaign’s proposal to split the delegates 50-50 in Michigan. Ultimately, the campaign agreed instead to support the compromise negotiated by the Michigan Democratic Party as a way to resolve the matter.
So, let me recap:
1. States decide to move the primary to “very early”
2. Party says: if you do that, the rules say your votes won’t count
3. Candidates pledge not to campaign, remove name from nomination. Both promise to do so, but only Obama removes his name in Michigan
4. Almost nobody shows up for the election, and the outcome isn’t really representative. (for example, 40% in Michigan votes “uncommitted”)
5. Nothing happens for a while.
6. Hillary discovers her campaign isn’t as succesful as expected, starts whining and threatens a scorched earth approach if she doesn’t get it her way
7. A compromise is reached, she’s still way behind. She continues whining.
8. Later this week: Obama gets the nomination.
Did I miss anything? Oh, and point 8 is based on this:
[Quote:]
Today’s Rules and Bylaws Committee decisions mean that Obama has, in the bag, 2052 delegates, just 66 short of the 2118 needed at the convention.
Tomorrow in Puerto Rico he will pick up about 24 delegates. And on Tuesday in South Dakota and Montana he will pick up about 17, for a total of 41 more pledged delegates, bringing him to at least 2093 delegates, which means he needs only 25 superdelegates to clinch the nomination.
There’s an interesting comment in that thread:
[Quote:]
At the beginning of the day, all of the Hillary supporters sitting around Carthage, Keirsten and I were quite vocal and energetic. Even up to the time the committee returned from their “lunch”, they were still quite vehemently pro-Hillary.
However, as the hecklers and yellers in the room got more and more vitriolic, most of the Hillary supporters grew quiet and by the time we left, were having awesome conversations with Obama people about unity and moving forward.
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