Rules and Bylaws Committee

Yesterday the Rules and Bylaws Committee, tasked with ensuring the Democratic Party conducts its operations within the standards set by its own rules, met in Washington, DC to decide the fate of the Michigan and Floriday delegations.

Fairly early on in the day, they arrived at a compromise on how to resolve the Florida delegates, but the Michigan question took quite a bit longer. The final decisions, passed unanimously in the case of Floriday and by a 2/3 majority in the case of Michigan, are as follows:

1) Florida: the entire delegation will be seated and the votes will be allocates as they were cast. However, the value of each delegate will be cut in half so that each delegate will cast a half vote. This results in Hillary achieving a net gain of 19 delegates.

2) Michigan: again, the entire delegation will be seated, and each delegate will cast a half vote.
However, since it was impossible to determine how the voters might have cast their ballots in a full election (remembering that Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson had all chosen to remove their names from the ballot in compliance with their understanding of the party rules), the Committee heard many proposals for how the delegates could be awarded to candidates. In the end, they accepted the proposal of the Michigan state delegation itself, which suggested that the delegates be split 59-69 in favour of Hillary Clinton. Once accounting for the half votes, this would wind up with 34.5 for Hillary and 29.5 for Barack - a total gain of 5 delegates for Hillary.

So, we have arrived at a solution. Both solutions were voted for in large numbers by Hillary Clinton's supporters on the Committee (who significantly outnumbered Obama supporters there). Both solutions were supported by the leadership of the states in question. Both solutions ahve the support of the Obama camapaign, even though they cause him to lose delegates.

Harold Ickes, from the Clinton campaign has said that Hillary reserves the right to challenge this result at the convention. However, it's unclear whether she will ultimately chose to do this. Especially since, unlike the standing Rules committee which is weighted towards her supporters, the Convention Credentials committee will contain a majority of Obama supporters.

I think it is fairly safe to say that the Michigan and Florida delegate problem has been resolved.

Is it a perfectly fair solution? In my view, it is not. Those voters who in good faith chose not to participate in an election that they were told would not count have been left out unfairly. It is by no means certain that Hillary Clinton would have won in Michigan if Barack's name been on the ballot in the first place. In both states, there is no way of knowing what the outcome would be if both candidates had actually campaigned in the states - Barack has significantly improved his numbers in every state he has actively campaigned in so far.

HOWEVER, as I have said before - a perfectly fair resolution was not possible at this point in the process. This is a resolution arrived at within the rules after careful deliberation, with the input of both campaigns and the states in question. It honors the voters of these states but still applies a penalty for the state's non-compliance.

Barack Obama is down 24 delegates today. But he still leads in the pledged delegates. He still leads in super delegates. He still leads in states won. He still leads in the popular vote (by almost every measure of counting).

Neither candidate achieved the best possible outcome at the Rules and Bylaws Committee yesterday. However, it may be that we have achieved the best possible outcome for the country - the chance to put all this behind us.

Just for the Record...

I think this proposal for how to resolve the Michigan delegate conundrum is reasonably fair and logical.

Both the Florida and Michigan delegates are impossible situations for the DNC - there simply is no way of resolving the problem that is fair to the voters of those states, to both remaining candidates, AND to the other states which did follow the rules from the outset.

And although there has been a lot of talk about supposed concerns over "disenfranchising" those voters who chose to participate in the beauty election primaries in these two states, it would be equally problematic (in my view) to then disenfranchise those people who chose not to participate in what they had been told was a non-binding election. The voter participation in both states was considerably lower than it has been in other states this cycle as a proportion of the population- we have to assume that this is at least in part because some people who would have otherwise voted believed the words of the party leadership when they insisted that this vote would not be valid.

Also, consider the fate of the Michigan voter who is not allowed to vote for his preferred candidate, even in the "beauty contest" race - only Clinton, Kucinich and Dodd were on the ballots there, leaving not only Obama voters but also Richardson, Edwards and Biden out in the cold.

It sucks - it really does. What about a full re-vote in both states. A clear and fair solution, right? Well, yes and no. First of all, there was a concerted campaign by Daily Kos in Michigan to persuade Democratic voters to vote in the Republican primary in order (ironically) to keep that race going for longer. This would prevent those people from then voting in a new Democratic primary.

What's more, this resolution of the problem would effectively turn these two states and their new elections into by far the most important races of the primary so far - thereby penalising each and every state that chose to play by the rules from the outset. Look down the line into the next cycle - in 4 years from now, doesn't this give each and every state an unbelievably strong incentive to break the party rules and set their primaries even earlier? If we're not careful we'll be chosing our next nominee before we've even managed to elect this one! This is precisely the outcome that Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were ALL trying to avoid when Dean proposed the penalties and the candidates agreed to support them.

I'm not saying that excluding the Michigan and Florida delegates from the Convention is in any way desirable - but I just don't see any solution at all that is fair to everyone. And I don't want to argue this from a narrow, pro-candidate position either - this is about the long term health of the party. When the Rules and Bylaws Committee meets on Saturday, they need to find a miraculous solution that will take all these factors into account, be acceptable to both campaigns, operate under a clear reading of the rules, and hopefully draw a close to the whole discussion so we can move on to fighting Republicans. I just can't think was that miracle solution might be!

Can you?

Today's the Day!

This race has been like a slow build of excitement (with a drip drip drip to the nomination rather than the expected gush) but let me cautiously say that on this day it is highly likely that Barack Obama will finally go over the threshold for a pledged delegate majority with his expected victory in the Oregon Primary. What does that mean? Well, it doesn't mean he's the nominee for sure.

But think of it this way - there are two halves to this process, one being pledged delegates, who are intended to represent the choice of the voters. Barack will emerge as the clear winner of that margin today. The second half is, of course, the much discussed "Super Delegates" who were put in place as (let's be honest here) a sort of "check" on democracy to make sure us voters don't get to carried away with our crazy notions. You may be offended by that, but don't worry about it too much - because Barack is ahead in that margin too. So it's all good.

And while I'm feeling sunny and optimistic, let me also point out that although many in the press and within the party have expressed a lot of serious concerns about whether the extended primary process will weaken our nominee for the general election (and frankly I share some of those concerns) there is a serious up side to the extended primary as well.

Barack will finish this race with skilled, tested, fully staffed, trained and operation on the ground operations in pretty much every state of the Union. McCain will be playing catch up on this measure for weeks, maybe months. This is doubly good news for us because this is Obama's real area of strength - he's a phenomenal grassroots organiser who has made a serious commitment to building the party for the future. So our ground game this year will be second to none - and certainly not second to the demoralised, downhearted Republicans who can't even win in Mississippi these days!