Obama took his name off the ballot and should be entitled to none of MI delegates. Period.

arguably legitimizes Michigan's popular vote.

True, but the popular vote is only an argument that is used to sway superdelegates.. and at this point it's not a very convincing one.

"AND it arguably legitimizes Michigan's popular vote"

No it doesn't.....is this the Michigan popular vote that awards Obama ZERO votes?

and for the record, the "popular vote" is a myth. There are too many ways to arrive at a hard number.

It's OVA!

How would it legitimize the popular vote?  Wouldn't the fact that Obama received delegates necessarily imply that at least 1 Michigan voter would have supported him?

If you allocate a certain percentage of the "uncommitted" vote to him, perhaps you'd have a point.

I seem to remember a big effort on behalf of the Obama campaign to have his supporters vote "uncommitted". Obama is not named "uncommitted" thus he should not receive those votes.

So no penalty at all?  I can't support that.  If MI had just done what the DNC asked them to do then we could have avoided a big, time wasting, distracting episode.   They deserve to be punished for their pigheadedness.

Well, there go all of Obama's caucus wins. If it ain't an election, it ain't legit.

If the Clintons remain as pig headed as some of their supporters they'll keep holding an empty bag.

Obama should make no deal with the vanquished until he has enough SDs to lock up the nomination any way it's looked at.

Strip 1/2 and then allocate.

need FL or MI, he'll be falling all over himmself trying to reach a compromise, even if it favors Hillary, to show us all how he cares so much about FL's and MI's voters. If he was concerned at all about the voters of FL and MI, there would already have been a revote, or at least one scheduled. All he had to do was agree to it.

I wonder what would happen if Obama said seat the dels as-is, but no supers for either state, an any convention ballot.  There do need to be real consequences for the FAIL, but it should fall on the supers and not the avg voter.

Yes, I'm all Obama all the way, and I'm not even sure this helps him out, but I think he could gain some goodwill from the voters of MI and FL that way, and leave the beef to the 'elites'.

The Clintons have demonstrated that they think strife serves their purpose better than unity.

Take it.  Get this thing over with.  We need to win Michigan in November.

"I wonder what would happen if Obama said seat the dels as-is, but no supers for either state, an any convention ballot."

Both will be seated, though it may have to wait until Hillary's political corpse stops twitching.

Hillary will reject and denounce anything but a 55-0 split.

As she should that 55% did not vote for Obama but for her. Anything less is a slap in the face of those voters.

Neither MI or FL is going to go to the convention with a full slate of delegates. The Rules and Bylaws Committee is made up of members whose states followed the rules and stuck to the schedule. The DNC rules for delegate selection lay out minimum penalties (50% of the delegation), and that's likely what you'll see enforced. If you think they're going to reward the bad behavior of MI and FL by letting them slide...well, I've got a bridge to sell.

Drudge Report heading...

DEM RACE WAR!

I hope you are happy Hillary.

Way to play the media narrative.

I can't believe some people have the gall to defend her
strategy and make believe it's no what it seems to be.

It is, what it is.

I know this is out of place here but I am livid right now.

I'm not concerned about punishing FL and MI any more. They've already been effectively shut out of the process for cheating and no states will try to pull such stunts in the future (near, at least).

The important thing now is to get them back into the fold in a way that doesn't corrupt the outcome as decided by voters in states which followed the rules.

Just seat the delegations, Obama shouldn't even care since its "over" anyway right?

Florida, and Michigan getting their delegates seated will not change the math today on how many delegates are needed to win the nomination.  If Obama sews up the nomination on 20 May based on the legitimate states, I don't think that Michigan and Florida will change that.  The nomination will be sewn up on 20 May.  On 31 May 08 the Michigan and Florida delegates will be seated, but they won't count towards making a difference in who won the nominaiton based on their illegitimacy of breaking the rules.

So Michigan's 'solution' involves a full delegation despite knowingly breaking the rules.  How surprising.

The only solution that makes sense is to change each Michigan and Florida delegate vote, both pledged and super, to a half-vote.  Assign Florida on the basis of the previous results, assign Michigan with Obama receiving the uncommitted total, let the supers pick who they will.

I'm fairly sure this is what will end up happening.  

I pray that Obama just ends it by going with this plan. It sounds great, and would just end this divisive debate.

When I observe people trying to claim an election with only one person on the ballot is fair,

I get upset and sad

because I value fair and honest elections where all folks have an equal shot

therefore, I request that Hillary supporters and Obama supporters accept this more fair compromise.

Any solution to resolve Michigan and Florida should not give any votes at all to superdelegates in those states. They caused this problem in the first place and it was their failure of leadership that prevented it from being resolved.

Sounds like a fair solution. It acknowleges Clinton's "victory" on a practical level (+10 delegates) but does provide her with a substantive bump that would alter the vote without it.

Clinton has rejected this latest plan for seating the MI delegates because it "does not honor the 600,000 votes that were cast in Michigan's January primary." It looks like Clinton wants the votes allocated exactly as they were polled.

Makes sense.

it's not like it's a delegate total, it's just a metric to sway supers - like asking them to look at random exit polls or gallup polls.  the delegate situation and the pop vote have nothing to do with each other

need to acknowledge that the party simply has to punish MI and FL for breaking the rules.  If MI and FL are not punished, 2012 will be a disaster.  Why wouldn't every state just ignore the party at that point?  

I agree that seating none of their delegates is pretty harsh and so I can see the reason to offer a compromise where they are counted at 50% value or whatever. But any plan that seats the entire FL and MI delegations as is seems to me to be a non-starter.  Pushing for that is a fairly poor faith suggestion by the Clinton campaign and to me just seems like an artificial way to keep the campaign going.  

The more I think about it, the less I am beginning to care.

It's all about convincing superdelegates now.  I'm convinced there is nothing, no twisting of unreliable metrics that will give the Clinton campaign the nomination.

well it was Clinton who is dis-enfranchising Michigan now:

Camp Hillary is rejecting the new plan floated today by Michigan Dems that would seat the delegation by awarding 69 delegates to Hillary and 59 to Obama.

Hillary spokesperson Isaac Baker emails over this:

   "This proposal does not honor the 600,000 votes that were cast in Michigan's January primary. Those votes must be counted."

This is hardly surprising, since the proposal gives Hillary a 10 delegate margin -- a significant cut from the 18-delegate margin of victory she enjoyed over "uncommitted" (Obama wasn't on the ballot) in the Michigan primary.

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Give it to her.  Give her Florida as well.  Give her Puerto Rico early.  It does not matter.

After her latest "white people" comment, the Supers are going to drop her like a greased watermellon.

Its amazingly simple. MI and FL knowingly went against the DNC and knew they would be punished for it, they did it anyway and were punished. Both Obama and Clinton agreed to the punishment. Either candidate changing their position now should be scrutinized and called out for what it is, an attempt change the rules mid-game, it simply is not a fair way to play.

As for the voters in MI and FL they will have the right in the next election cycle to hold those who screwed up the vote for their state accountable.

If anyone should be penalized, it's them.  If anyone should have been working overtime to make sure the MI and FL Dems stayed within the rules, it was them.

In both states, they seem to have barely tried to do so.

So nuts to them.  However MI's and FL's delegates are allocated, penalized, or whatever, NO MI/FL SUPERDELEGATES should have a vote at the convention.  Period.

Here's the inherent problem with seating MI and FL. The DNC came up with a system and a state primary timeline. The states were told when they would have their primaries and were told they would be penalized if they moved them up. Primaries are not the GE. Primary rules are set by the parties. So those rules must be enforceable or you have chaos. Mi and FL decided to play chicken and lost.

Now suppose the DNC says OK just kidding we'll seat you and count your votes. Where are we? Back to chaos, because the states will figure the rules are meaningless.

The disenfranchisement argument is also weak since this is a primary and not a GE. Voters can only be legitimately and constitutionally called disenfranchised from a election run by state or federal entity, not by a party.

Now if all the parties want to get together and come up with a fair an equitable solution that still keeps in place some penalty to these states fine.

What is not fine is saying oh never mind rules who needs rules.

And lets face it Hillary is fighting so hard for these not out of some great moral belief to have all the votes count. Do you seriously think had she wrapped it up on Feb 5th like she thought she would she would be making this pitch. I seriously doubt it. And the yells from her supporters on this issue I find equally disingenuous. You are not doing this out of moral outrage, you are doing to try and get your candidate the nomination. I understand that and fine, but at least be honest with yourselves.

I am also sure if the shoe was on the other foot The Obama camp would be making the same pleas.

She should accept it.

Seating MI's supers is huge for Clinton because the ruling from last year excludes them and they lean Hillary.

Although it's not right for Obama to pretend he got votes and delegates from a state that he voluntarily sacrificed, this is more a matter of perception.  The compromise to Hillary is more fair than I would have expected.

Seriously, whatever deficit she'd have in delegates from this MI compromise, her goal should be to make up for it by racking up big margins in WV, KY, and PR.  She's going to have more political capital after those states vote.  Then, she could take her argument to the supers.

Rejecting this damages her credibility.

SOMETIMES I WISH I WAS HER CAMPAIGN MANAGER!!!

Argh.

Clinton won 55% of the vote in Michigan, which translates to 70 delegates.  This is exactly the amount offered to her in this proposal and she declines it?

Very unfortunate.

At this point I dont care about the resolution for pledged delegates.  There will have to be a compromise and whatever that compromise is it wont have an impact on the end game.

But whatever that compromise is Micihgan should get NO super delegates period.  And Id love that to apply to at least a few primary election cycles in the futute.

The fault of Michigan being where it is rests 100% with them.  Let me repeat that - Michigan is no ones fault but Michigans super delegates - not the DNC's fault, not Clintons fault and not Obamas fault.  Michigan screwed this up and then left a terrible mess for the parents to clean up later.  Screw Michigan super delegates.

They have a history of doing this, playing chicken with the calendar and were warned repeatedly by everyone of the consequences.  Yet they still played and now they should rightfully get smited.

So whatever on the pledged delegates - reward the common folk if you will - but no supers.  Period.

Rant over.