I believe the issue of seating the Florida and Michigan delegates is now the only hope that the Clinton campaign has in dragging out the nomination past June 3.
I sent an email to most of the members of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, which meets this Saturday (May 31st) to find a resolution to the issue of seating the Florida and Michigan delegations.
I've only had one reply so far (from an 'uncommitted' committee member), but it gives an insight into how the Committee may approach this issue and why MICHIGAN may be the biggest problem for the Obama campaign.
Basically the Committee member said that he will make a 'rules-driven decision', and he then went on to quote the relevant DNC rule (Rule 20 C.1.a) which says that states which schedule their primaries/caucuses too early will be sanctioned by losing 50% of their delegates. (Note: not 100% as was imposed on FL and MI a year ago.)
The rule also says that the superdelegates of the rogue states will be stripped of their votes completely, but this contradicts a 'higher' rule within the DNC's 'constitution' that says all state party members (ie. state party superdelegates) have the right to be seated (and vote) at the National Convention. I think resolving Florida should be straight-forward according to this rules-driven thinking - Clinton got 50% of the vote, Obama 33% and Edwards 14%. Since Edwards has endorsed Obama, we can add their % together, so Florida's pledged delegates (185) would be split in half and then allocated 50% to Clinton and 47% to Obama. I believe that Clinton has previously received the endorsement of a majority of the FL superdelegates (whatever that number is), but the bottom line for FL is that none of this makes a difference to the current outcome of Obama winning the nomination.However, applying the rule(s) to the Michigan situation is trickier, which the Committee member admitted, and I think this is where the real fight will be. Clinton got ~60% of the vote with ~40% going to Uncommitted. I've read that the Clinton camp is pushing for that 40% to remain uncommitted, ie. not allocated to Obama. That's where trouble lies for the Obama campaign, because if you do not give him any of the 'uncommitted' pledged delegates from MI, he may no longer have the majority of the pledged delegates when the last states vote on June 3 and FL and MI are added (with 50% of their delegates).
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