The Democratic Rules Committee Hearing

Today, we had the Democratic Rules Committee meet today regarding the seating of the delegates of Florida and Michigan for the Democratic Convention this August in Denver. The Rules Committee previously decided to strip both states of all their convention delegates because they voted before Super Tuesday. We had a grand compromise where all the delegates will be “seated” but with only ½ vote each. Hillary Clinton received essentially the vote split she wanted for the Florida delegation although she would have preferred a full voting and “seating” of Florida. Obama got a break on the Michigan delegation and got a 59-69 allocation of the delegates instead of 55-73 as the Hillary people wanted. Harold Ickes, one of the members of the Committee and former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton, threatened on behalf of Hillary to take the matter to the convention and the Credentials Committee.

This resolution seemed like a common sense solution to me. Rules need to mean things, namely both states went early and they needed to penalize the states for voting early. Had they restored both states full delegation and voting, that would have showed that violating rules for the DNC have no consequences. It appeared according to the rules that the Committee had to cut at least half of the delegates of both states. That is what they did; this is what they should have done in the first place. (I am a Republican in South Carolina; the Republican National Committee cut our delegates in half because we voted too early. I was upset about this. However, we had a robust campaign here as all the candidates showed up. John McCain won a close, but decisive victory over Mike Huckabee and then cruised to the nomination.) Upsetting Florida and Michigan voters is not a good idea as they are going to be huge states (remember Florida 2000) in November. It seemed to me watching from a distance that the Rules Committee made the decision that they should have made last year.

Restoring the delegates from Florida was an easier decision for the committee to make. They even considered restoring all of the voting rights of their delegation. The Florida Democrats did not make the decision to vote early. This decision came from the majority Republican legislature and signed by Governor Crist, a Republican. The Florida Democrats were caught in a bind and it appeared that there was nothing they could do.

Michigan was another story. US Senator Carl Levin led the charge to move the primary date up to an early slot. The Democratic legislature and Democratic governor Granholm pushed this change through. The Party had already agreed to penalize Florida prior to Michigan wanting to move their primary up. A harsher penalty for Michigan would have sent a string message for states to not break the rules on the scheduling dates in the future. Again, however, not restoring some of Michigan’s delegates would have been more likely to lead to John McCain winning Michigan in November. So Michigan gets a slap on the wrist and not worse.

Michigan was also more difficult decision for the Rules Committee to make as Obama was not on the ballot in the decision for delegate allocation. Hillary won about 55% of the vote and Uncommitted took about 40%. Most of that vote was probably for Obama, some to John Edwards and some to the minor candidates. Hillary would have seemed to make a claim for 73 delegates (and she wanted the other 55 to be “uncommitted.”). However, in trying to figure out the intent of the voters, the Committee, relying on the presentation of Carl Levin, shifted the allocation to 69 for Clinton and the other 59 for Obama. This very well may lead to an appeal to the Credentials Committee at the beginning of the National Convention in Denver by either Michigan for not giving them the full vote or by the Hillary campaign for a different allocation. This makes it possible, maybe even probable that Hillary will not concede until she takes her fight to Denver and the convention.

We will have to see what happens with last primaries on Tuesday in Montana and South Dakota. I think that most Democrats wants this done and will push the last undecided superdelegates to go for Obama and take him over the top for whatever the “magic number” of delegates to win is now. The members of Congress will be under even more pressure to decide since the Congressional leadership wants this “done”. I could be wrong, but I see Hillary (even though she is beat) taking this to the bitter end. I’m a political junkie, so I’ll be here watching and writing on it.