[Ed. note: the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting is now underway this Saturday morning and can be watched live on C-SPAN both on cable and on the internet. Michigan-based blogger Marcy Wheeler is also liveblogging the meeting from the meeting venue; follow along with her via her blog.
Michigan is back in the national spotlight this weekend as the Democratic National Committee takes up the issue of the state’s delegates with what is expected to be a final say on the much-discussed matter.
Hillary Clinton has been campaigning for the committee to seat all the delegates from Michigan and Florida and to do so in a generous proportion that would cut Barack Obama’s lead in delegates.
Clinton, who has likened the DNC’s stripping of Michigan and Florida’s delegates for front-loading their primary against party rules to the level of constitutional crime, will have supporters picket and demonstrate Saturday in front of the Washington, D.C., hotel where the committee is staying, imploring members to “count every vote.”
According to an A.P. report from this morning:
At least several busloads of Clinton supporters were anticipated from Florida and perhaps scores of people from Michigan as well as demonstrators from various parts of the United States. Barack Obama’s campaign discouraged a counterprotest, although his supporters vied with Clinton backers for the limited public seats inside the meeting.
Continued – Mark Brewer, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party and defender of the move to advance the state’s primary against DNC rules, sits, somewhat ironically, on the Rules and Bylaws Committee as one of seven members uncommitted to either candidate. Clinton leads in those members who have already endorsed, 13-8 over Obama. Calls to Brewer were not immediately returned.
But according to some observers, neither protests nor any perceived advantage with the allegiance of the committee membership will help Clinton. In a well-written piece by Walter Shapiro at Salon, he reports that the rules committee has already made up its mind.
Key figures on the rules committee informally agreed by telephone Wednesday night to seat the entire Florida delegation based on the Jan. 29 primary, but to give each delegate only half a vote. The same principle would be applied to Michigan, but there are still unresolved complications over how to handle the “Uncommitted” delegates chosen in the Jan. 15 primary, in which Obama’s name was not even on the ballot. Under this 50-percent compromise, the beleaguered Clinton would gain a 28-delegate edge (19 from Florida and nine from Michigan), not counting the half-votes from the 53 superdelegates from the two rogue states. With Obama nearly 200 delegates ahead and the clock nearing midnight for Clinton, the rules committee’s verdict is likely only briefly to delay the anointment of a Democratic nominee.
For her part, Clinton has threatened to take her fight to the convention if she is not satisfied with the results of Saturday’s rules committee meeting, but in a Huffington Post story, David Espo reports that DNC leaders are pushing hard for a wrap-up within a week of the final primaries on Tuesday by leaning on the fewer-than-200 remaining uncommitted superdelegates to weigh in and end it.
(Harry) Reid, in an interview on radio station KGO in San Francisco, said he had talked since Wednesday with both (Nancy) Pelosi and (Howard) Dean. “We agree there won’t be a fight at the convention. … We’re going to urge folks to make a decision quickly – next week.”
Obama is within 40 delegates of claiming the nomination, and he is expected to win 20 delegates in the final primaries on Tuesday. Barring any sort of “Hail Mary”-style windfall for Clinton at Saturday’s rules committee meeting, a wave of superdelegate commitments following Tuesday’s final primary results would ostensibly put Obama over the top, allowing him to claim the nomination.
Wishes, on the part of key leadership in the state to move up Michigan’s primary, began years ago. The Democratic efforts are detailed here, and Republican State Sen. Michelle McManus in a January essay, claimed credit for the move on the other side of the aisle.
If the Rules and Bylaws Committee does what it is expected Saturday, Michigan Democrats will end up having a half vote for each delegate, with Republican delegates having a full vote by half their contingent at the RNC convention.