This Saturday is DNC-Day.
Members of the Rules and Bylaws Committee will meet in Washington to hear oral arguments from representatives of the two states over how to resolve seating delegates in Denver and popular vote count totals. After the oral argument phase, members will vote on the proposals.
PART I: The Proposals
At the moment there are two proposals from each state on the table (as nearly as I can tell from the varying accounts and slapdash media coverage).
The most inclusive, of course, is to seat all delegates with full voting rights and to include the popular vote totals (approximately 2.3 million: 600,000 in Michigan and 1.7 million in Florida). All of Clinton's surrogates and supporters are pushing for this solution. See here, here, and here.
There are good reasons for this, which requires a post in itself (with all relevant links).
Briefly, in both cases Republican-controlled legislatures forced these dates on the states. However, there is some question about whether Party Democrats in the states "challenged" these decisions with enough gusto. Florida is probably the most egregious case of being overridden by Republicans on this matter. In Michigan it isn't entirely clear. The other issue, of course, is that Obama chose to take his name off the ballot in Michigan (and we're actually a hair's breadth away from nominating this inexperienced smooth-talker as the Democratic Party candidate).
Even so, both states proposed new primaries/caucuses to the DNC (to "cure" the problem of setting their primaries early in the DNC's calendar), which was accepted as "cure" by Howard Dean and leading RBC members, but which Sen. Obama dragged his feet on and of course left unresolved until now. I posted yesterday on this aspect of it.
PART II: The "Compromise"
Today, there is a compromise proposal gaining traction (at least among the political media): being "floated" by the states. Essentially it is this:
[snip]
This plan would halve the votes for all of the Florida delegates, netting Clinton 19 and, more importantly, counting that popular vote. But Michigan's primary results would not be accepted and, instead, that state's delegates would simply be split 50-50 between Clinton and Obama.
All of the delegations, under this compromise, would be seated in full, but each delegate's vote would be counted as 0.5, including the superdelegates.
Clinton's campaign has said the Michigan proposal is not acceptable because of the 50/50 split. She won the state's primary 60/40 (roughly). Obama's campaign instructed his supporters in Michigan to vote for "Uncommitted" on the ballot (since there were two choices: Clinton and Uncommitted). He would gain delegates that didn't necessarily vote FOR him under this proposal.
I have not found any response to the proposed Florida solution. Another thing to keep in mind is that DNC members really don't want media scrutiny over this on Saturday (or beyond), so this "proposal" being floated could simply be a trial balloon to draw away heat from the proceedings.
More on that tomorrow, in addition to a sample letter to use in contacting Superdelegates - which will become critical this weekend and into Monday and Tuesday (and which has been moved in part by Nancy Pelosi's 'threat' to end this campaign next Tuesday/Wednesday).
In the meantime, enjoy the Video Of The Day
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