Getting MI out of the way

by Jerome Armstrong [courtesy of MyDD]

On FL & MI:

As Clinton's camp calls for counting the January results, Obama's campaign has rejected them, arguing that the contests in Florida and Michigan were invalid because both candidates had agreed not to campaign in the two renegade states. Obama's name wasn't even on the Michigan ballot.
From Obama's perspective, the status quo is fine. Lumping together FL & MI as being invalid, and then saying that Obama wasn't on the ballot, is a strong argument. Actually, that's an incorrect frame. Obama was on the ballot in MI, he then voluntarily took himself off of the ballot, his staff having engineered a backroom deal with the other candidates to discount the state (and Clinton) ahead of the IA and NH contests; regardless, it serves as a good trump card for Obama to say 'I wasn't even on the ballot' in MI to also shut it down on FL.

The Clinton camp isn't going to let FL votes count as half, and that's a good move. The last thing we need is re-instituting the memory of certain individuals having less than a one-vote one-person share. The Obama argument against Florida, on its own, carries little weight, so what the Clinton camp needs to do, is take MI off the table.

Also, note this:

Democratic National Committee member Jon Ausman has filed a separate appeal to the DNC's rules and bylaws committee, saying the DNC doesn't have the authority to bar the state's superdelegates and asking the committee to ease its punishment by restoring at least half of the state's delegates.
That would seem to stand up, as the superdelegates are in no way tied to the results of their states.


Tags: 2008 election (all tags)

Posted March 17th, 2008 12:35 PM by Syndicated