The Longest Day
Today’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting was hyped as one of the
biggest shindigs of the Democratic primary season, and you can see why. It was
in everyone’s interest to inflate its importance. Hillary Clinton needs to rake
in delegates and ratify the popular votes in Florida
and Michigan.
Obama needs to look fair-minded and start courting the two states for the
general. And for Dems, it’s an all-out pep rally—a chance to talk about unity
and voters’ rights while implicitly kick off the general election season.
But if you pare it down to what’s actually at stake, the
event starts to feel rather puffed-up. The solutions proposed by the two
campaigns in the first half of the day don’t differ much. The Clinton
camp demanded a full seating of the Florida
delegates, while the Obama camp endorsed the so-called Ausman compromise, which
would halve the delegation’s influence. The difference between their solutions,
in terms of delegates netted for Clinton,
isn’t much: One gets her 38, the other gets her 19. For Michigan,
Clinton pushed
for a 73-55 delegate split (which would give Obama all the “uncommitted”
delegates), while Obama’s team requested an even 50-50 split. Again, one
proposal gets her 18 delegates, the other gets her zero. Even if the Clinton camp got everything they wanted, Clinton would win about 50 delegates. Given
Obama’s 200-delegate lead, that’s about as useful as a wet sock.
The debate over Florida was
relatively tame compared to the Michigan
issue. The reason, in a nutshell: Obama was on the ballot in Florida. In Michigan’s case, the committee’s problems
sound almost more metaphysical than political: How do you count an election
that wasn’t supposed to count in the first place? How many votes do you give a
candidate no one voted for? Can you assign delegates to a candidate without
implicitly giving him popular votes as well?
The problem is, both sides have good points. RBC member and Clinton supporter Elaine Kamarck voiced reservations about
Michigan’s
proposed 69-59 split, which used a combination of voting number and exit polls
to reach a compromise: “My problem is willy-nilly arbitrary assignment of
delegates when we actually had a legitimate vote. This way lies chaos.” But the
vote we do have, Obama surrogate
David Bonior argued, is flawed. Donna Brazile traced it all back to a simple
lesson: “My mother also taught me, I'm sure you're mother also taught you, that
when you decide to change the rules, especially in the middle game and the end
of the game, that is referred to as cheating.” When Michigan Democrat Mark Brewer
presented the state party’s plan, Eric Kleinfeld asked why he thinks he can
just pick numbers out of a hat: “Are you relying on any rule?” “No,” Brewer
responded, “but we have to do something.”
The difficulty of figuring out that something is probably
why the committee still hasn’t returned from lunch, which started three hours
ago.