Soviet style!  That's a laugh... when you wanted to include an illegal election that had only one candidate on the ballot!

I'm glad that they restored some semblance to those who were severely disenfranchised by this "election"... told to stay homoe... told an election didn't count.. and then... surprise!!!  oh, yeah, suckers... we lied to you... it does count!

Now, that's some pretty sweet voter suppression by the Clinton camp!  I'm sure the Republicans are taking notes.

Guess you're a little ignorant of history, eh?

I won't complain, but I'll tell you this. Howard Dean (and Harry Reid too for that matter) have got to go, the sooner the better.

Okay. So now the 5 Clinton supporters who voted for the compromise are somehow in Obama's pocket? Please reintroduce yourself to reality.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/1/7 2643/08080/210/526590

Great post on this topic.  

4) No votes were "stolen"

In his vociferous arguments, Ickes claimed that the RBC had "stolen" 4 delegates for Clinton and "given" them to Obama

However, in order for ANY delegates to be `stolen', those delegates must have been approved in the first place.

According to the RBC ruling in effect during the period of the 2008 primary elections in MI & FL, no allocation of delegates whatsoever could be sanctioned.

Therefore, the only time that any delegate in either state could possibly be recognized as valid was AFTER yesterday's acceptance of a majority vote by the RBC to amend its sanctions against MI & FL.

As has been shown in (2) above, the decision to allocate MI delegates in a ration of 69 to 59 in favor of Clinton was made by the state party officials, not by the RBC.

The RBC carefully considered the arguments placed before it by those officials as to their `best efforts' attempt to deliver a representative (arguably a Fair Reflection) allocation of delegates according to the preferences of the members of the Democratic Party in MI.

According to the only measure that counts, the DNC rules & bylaws, Clinton never `had' 73 delegates in Michigan to be taken away. Therefore any claim by Ickes that the allocation was altered can only be valid in the sense that the RBC voted to allow Clinton to receive 69 delegates more than she had before.  Also, without an acknowledged `fair count' in MI, since that figure is higher than the 59 to Obama, any concern over bias (given the invalidity of the election) would be in favor of Clinton, not Obama.

Furthermore, now that the delegate allocation has been sanctioned by an RBC majority vote, any adjustment of the allocation that might be considered by future committees could be considered as the very interference that Ickes decries.

Who is a powerful member of the Democratic Party was correct.

You can't have a fair valuation of a flawed election.

The WHOLE point of the meeting was compromise in the name of unity.

I dare say some Clinton supporters are not interested in unity by any measure.

240 delegates for Clinton to win. 240 240 240 240 240 240

Do the math. It aint' gonna happen.

Stop whining and move on.

Absolutely true.  It looks like a total fix.  Even yesterday, a few people I met out in Philadelphia who knew little about politics said succintly,

"I really have no idea why they have to stop counting the votes in Florida in Michigan in order for Obama to win."

For us political junkies, it's fundamentally unfair (unless one happens to be an unwavering results-oriented Obama supporter).  For people outside of the loop, it looks even stranger.  It looks like the system was tempered to give an advantage to the less experienced candidate.  

Hmm, the Michigan ballot only had her name on it.  Now what was Soviet style?

Your paean to democracy is tiresome.  Michigan and Florida knowingly violated the rules.  Anything they got was charity.

I agree with Jerome on this (and I'm an Obama supporter), they should not have awarded those four extra delegates to Cliton.  It is just makes it harder to put the contraversy to bed.  That said, the number involved is just not likely to be decisive, so hopefully people will not loose their heads over this.  We need to sort this mess out, both now and for the future, but we also need to keep some perspective on the larger goals of defeating the neocons.  Lets try and have this debate without deepening the division within the party.

Peace

No one complained when the DNC stripped FL and MI of their delegates last year. Not one single peep. FL and MI violated the DNC rules. If voters from these states felt disenfranchised, they should have voiced their concerns at the time of disenfranchisement. The actual act of moving the primary was a political move by state politicans. If you are disenfranchised, your best recourse is to vent your anger with the politicans that allowed this to happen not the DNC. Protests and complaints only occurred after one candidate, who was losing, wanted to play the last card she had. This is manipulation, don't give in to it. The decision of the RBC, although perhaps flawed, was a form of resolution. This is a democracy and we have compromises.

Funny, Jerome didn't mention that FOUR
Clinton Supporters on the Rules and Bylaws Committee voted FOR the Michigan Party's compromise too.

from Jerome's Salon link:

But politics is ultimately about votes, and Clinton -- even though she had 13 supporters on the rules committee -- did not have them. When the committee took test votes over lunch (and holdouts like Donna Brazile, Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager, finally chose sides), there was a surprising 14-to-13 majority for evenly dividing the Michigan delegation between Obama and Clinton.

That would have been the fairest solution and the one I would have liked to see, but the Oboma people were willing to seek a broader based consensus and bring some of the Clinton supporters on board by going with the Michigan State Party's proposal.

It was the Michigan State Party that is responsible for this mess, and it also is the Michigan State Party that is responsible for this messy solution. But make no mistake, committee members from BOTH SIDES signed off on this.

We'd lose the Supreme Court for a few decades. Wonder if that might change some interpretations. Oh, what the heck - Hillary lost 4 delegates, let's find out!

I agree - the rules need to be GUTTED and CHANGED! But that won't happen this election cycle - time for real Democrats to heal and come together.

The American soldiers and citizens of other countries who will die in the wars McCain will start are no doubt relieved that American women will still have the option of choosing abortion.

You really don't understand politics or the way it works.  Conservative Judges get appointed ALL the time and passed in Dem Controlled congresses.  The worst of the worse might fail, but you are still going to get some bad ones.  

The POINT YOU MISS are three fold 1) By giving McCain a chance, you set him up to be popular enough to win re-election regardless of the nominee against (a popular incumbent McCain is going to tear apart Hillary, Bayh or any of our other posssibilities)...  Just look at Bill Clinton for that lesson.  2) You play defense with SCOTUS appointees instead of offense.  Defense gets you AT BEST a moderate like O'Connor which might be ok for R  v W but is trouble for other cases (Remember the 2000 Recount was decided on party lines).  At worst you get a conservative who can lie well, such as Roberts.  3) Yes Congress can try and pass Universal Healthcare.  But McCain will veto.  And we don't have enough votes to overturn that veto.  You are talking 4 years of deadlock.  We need to control ALL 3 areas to undo the BUSHIES... we have 4 years at best to do it with  (Given Senate Election numbers, fightable seats, etc in 2008 and 2010)  before WE have to play defense in Senate Elections.  

So before making comments like that you really need to understand the results of that action.  Just like all the people in 2000 who thought Bush and Gore were the same and voted for Nader... helping to give us Bush.

of the Dem coalition in the Obama-McCain fight, you should not expect the rest of the Dem coalition to hold on a filibuster of McCain SCOTUS nominees.

Great job at learning from Bush in 2000.  How'd that turn out.

Plouffe was at the meeting, I saw him walking around. He even had a friendly chat with Wolfson for 10 mins or so.

The claim on the votes is all over the news.  They may have been Clinton supporters but they supported the voter resolution.

There's barely any modern precedent for having "uncommitted" delegates. The best way to avoid this being any sort of precedent is to never have a situation where candidates are removing themselves from the ballot because they've signed pledges not to participate in a state's election.

If anything, the RBC ruling concludes a process that is going to make it very unlikely we'll see this again. In future elections, if a state jumps the queue, that state is going to lose half it's delegates, but it's not going to be shut out entirely.

I think your dominant way of seeing the conflict is as a HRC partisan.

I don't believe you care about protecting the sanctity of uncommitted delegates or anything else. You want Clinton to win the big conflict. You want her to win the little conflicts.

There are conflicting rule-based arguments. The committee had to decide on a compromise because the rules conflicted with each other.

The simplest rule-based argument would be for the DNC to stick to the rules and not seat the delegation.

However, your fellow HRC partisans were going to scream about disenfranchisement.

So, b/c your political camp--and spare me any claims your not in the HRC camp--threatened to do something exceedingly destructive to the party. Your side got a generous deal.

And you're still whining about the deal you got.

This coupled with Clinton supporters threatening to vote McCain makes me suspect that no amount of compromising and sucking-up to Clinton supporters will be enough.

I'm sorry you bet your political and blogging career on a loser. But it probably wasn't a good judgment call to turn your blog into a ghetto for the disgruntled HRC supporters.

A better solution is to give Hillary Clinton all of the 55 Puerto Rico Pledge Delegates. Half of the pledge Delegates in Montana and South Dakota.

She should take her name off the ballot in Montana and ask the RBC to do another "Chicago style" allocation of that state's delegates.

with all of this? Honestly, what do you want to happen here on MyDD?

You don't count the votes, when you can't count ALL the votes. Counting one contender's votes and not the other's is worse yet.

Where he has been consistent is in supporting enforcement of the rules.  Makes sense in a constitutional law professor, no?

BTW, that rules on signatures and the ballot are there to prevent such things as having dead people vote, as they have been known to do in Chicago.

Since we know you're voting Republican, I guess it would be interesting, from that perspective.

He should not have any delegates since he opposes elections.

Didn't he just win most of the elections?

A revote would have disqualified a lot of Obama's independent voters who voted in the Republican primary since their candidate was not on the democratic ballot. I'm sure you know this already, but why let facts get in the way of "righteous" indignation.

5 of Hillary's supporters crossed over and voted for the compromise. It's over.

Bushies also deny the media treated Bush differently than either Gore or Kerry and they also decided for Bush totally independently and were not influenced by the media.

Hogwash.

How has Obama delivered on his message at all?  The Democratic party is more divided than ever.  It took him a matter of weeks to turn tail and run from his church of 20 years when the political heat got too much.  I can't tell the difference between his supporters and Republicans on blog with their viciousness toward Clinton and her supporters, let alone McCain.

So what's the change? Where's the unity?  Where's all this inspiration?

He's a fraud. a Very smart guy with a great philosophy, very good at reflection, but who doesn't have the substance yet to run for president so is running on this vapid BS.

Juvenile.

The media also gave us Bush.  If you deny that the media are influencing election outcomes, you are not dealing with reality.

Just as Bush's case for war was a fraud, so is Obama's hope/change/inspiration meme, as you prove with your contentious sarcasm.  The media gave Obama a free ride and have been brutal to Clinton, and the result is that Americans are not voting based on adequate criteria.

"Every vote counts" assuming the ballots are legitimate. Michigan didn't have a legitimate ballot, so it's a sham.

MI pulled the same shit in 2000.  They got what they deserved.

Never fails to amaze me just how inspired Obamans are to a more civil politic.

Not.

Where's the change again?

So were Bush and the GOP.

I'm not discussing the American Electorate's really dumb choices here.

Amount of these complaints when "the party" gave Hillary a 100+ superdelegate lead before voting took place: ZERO.

Because, you know...that was "the people" deciding, not party elders....

So, "the media" or "the DNC" or "the Man" manufactured 1.5 million donors, made Hillary basically give up after Super Tuesday, and also forced her to pander on the gas tax?

Sure. Meanwhile, her STARTING THE CONTEST with a huge advantage in fundraising, superdelegates, and big name party machine runners (e.g. Rendell) was COMPLETELY DEMOCRATIC AND FAIR.

My heart goes out to you guys for the cognitive dissonance you're going through now.

Don't forget the grassy knoll! Won't anyone remember the grassy knoll?!?!?

Also, I find it amazing that you have reliable polling on the feelings of independents to the RBC decision, since it was just announced today.  Who had this remarkable insta-poll?    SUSA?  Rasmussen?  Your ass?

Ha!

I realize that the Rules committee voted for a solution that was based on no rules or precedents.

They arbitrarily assigned votes to Obama that were cast by actual voters for Hillary Clinton.  There is nothing in any rules that allows the Rules Committee to do this.  There's no rule and there's no precedent for this.  In fact it goes against the very core principles of democracy.  You can't take people's votes for one candidate and give them to a different candidate.

Do you realize that the Obama camp's main argument about not counting these two states were "Rules are Rules"?  Do you realize that after making this argument vehemently for months, they easily tossed those rules out the window when it suited them?

Rules are Rules.  Can you cite something in the Rules that gives that committee the authority to take actual votes cast in an election from one candidate and assign them to another candidate?

Rules are Rules.  That's what we were told.  And this is the Rules Committee for God's sake?  I just want to see something that proves they can reassign votes cast in an election.  That's all.  So where is it?  Show me those ROOLZ.

he weas allowed to REPEATEDLY ENDORSE JOHN MCCAIN over Barack Obama with no rebuke

really?  REPEATEDLY ENDORSE in caps lock?

I believe she made ONE statement about the CIC threshhold, no?  In whose world does this translate into "REPEATEDLY ENDORSE"?

just a clarification - when I mean the election wasn't "tainted" or "flawed" - I meant that in the respect of who was on the ballot.  Those folks made their choice and they were not forced to do so.  They did it for their own political reasons, just as Hillary left her name on.

It was flawed in the respect that I do recognize that MI folks didn't come out and vote or they jumped to the republican party to vote

COUNT THE VOTES!!!  COUNT THE VOTES!!!!

yeah, right... the Clintons don't care about any votes or voters other than their own.

I am sorry, but it is the candidate's fault - those who took their name off the ballot to pick up brownie points in NH & Iowa and also refused to submit the paper work to have write-in's count.

It's not the candidates faults. The candidates were told the primary would not count. How then can you judge them as if that assurance had not been made? How can they, or their voters be penalized, as if specific guidelines hadn't been set?

"hey, this primary won't count"
"ok, taking my name off"
"HAHA, lol got you! It does count!"

And it's the candidate's fault?

The only source bullshit here is those pretending Hillary didn't get much more that what she was entitled to from the RBC meeting.

You trivialize it at your peril...and the country's.

Your post proves it's all about Obama hatred of Clinton, not about Democrats beating McCain.

That is going to sink Dems in November.

Their campaign has been nothing but spin and whining since the end of February.  They've had nothing else.