Posted: May 31, 2008 1:37 PM
Status of Michigan Delegation Emerges as Key DNC Problem
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As the Democratic meeting entered the early afternoon, the fate of Michigan, whose 157 delegates were stripped for moving their primary to Jan. 15, remained one of the most problematic issues the DNC faced.
Michigan officials, led by the state’s Governor and Clinton supporter Jennifer Granholm, are pushing the Democratic National Committee to award the delegates as per the vote totals — Clinton 55 percent and “uncommitted” 40 percent.
“We want the Michigan delegation seated in full with full voting rights,” Sen. Carl Levin told the committee.
But state party officials acknowledged that the vote did not fully represent the views of the party members since neither Barack Obama nor John Edwards appeared on the ballot voters cast that day. “The ballot did not give us a true picture of the view of voters,” party chairman Mark Brewer said. “We find ourselves in a very unusual and unique situation.”
Heading into the meeting, Clinton advisers were saying they should be awarded all of the Great Lake State’s delegates they won, but added another wrinkle to the argument, saying the committee could not award any of the “uncommitted” delegates to Obama.
Some Democratic officials had proposed giving those uncommitted delegates to Obama as a compromise, but Harold Ickes, a senior Clinton strategist, said that would be a violation of the rules.
“This committee, the Rules and Bylaws Committee, and the DNC does not have the jurisdiction or the power to take those delegates, to take that uncommitted delegate line, and award it to Sen. Obama or any other presidential campaign any more than this committee and the DNC has the power to take the 73 delegates or any part thereof that were awarded to Hillary Clinton as a result of that January primary and give them to another candidate,” The Wall Street Journal quoted Ickes as saying, “That is as fundamental a rule as there is. It is bedrock, it’s below bedrock, you know, of our party. And so that’s a long answer, and the short answer is no.”
Obama strategist David Axelrod told CNN he expected the committee to abide by the rules, which could mean cutting the delegate total from the state in half.
“I think there are rules and those rules need to be enforced,” The Detroit Free Press reported in its blog.
It seemed the fight over Michigan may be one of the real contentious issues at Saturday’s meeting. A late night discussion among officials appeared to make little progress on the matter.
According to ABC, ” The key sticking point is how to allocate delegates in Michigan where Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., took his name off of the ballot.”
-- By , NewsHour with Jim Lehrer | Comments | Link
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I find it thoroughly egregious that Senator Clinton is demanding that she "should be awarded all of the Great Lake State’s delegates they won, but added another wrinkle to the argument, saying the committee could not award any of the “uncommitted” delegates to Obama".
She signed off last year on the rules affecting both Michigan's and Florida's primaries because of their illegal voting dates. Then, to turn around and demand they receive all of the delegates won from the vote is self-serving enough, but to say that Senator Obama should not receive any delegates at all speaks to a serious deficiency of character in Senator Clinton in my view.
To me, by this action she shows her hand as virulently self-serving, conniving, underhanded, a power-at-all-costs politician in the same vein as many now removed Republicans have shown themselves to be. That is the type of public servant I am voting out this year - not voting for.
This can be coupled with her intended lawsuit of Texas as reported in March by NPR because she didn't like the outcome of that state's primary/caucus vote even though she knew full well the rules going in.
She also seeks a similar unfair advantage in the Florida primary. Again, this is the type of public servant I am voting out this year - not voting for.
Steve Dahmus
Seattle
In regard to the squabble over the seating of delegates at the Democrats convention: I keep hearing about voters being disenfrancised, but it seems to me that candidates and voters who obeyed the party rules in good faith should not be penalized. In effect every unopposed and illegal delegate vote would be possibly nullifying a potential vote for one of the other candidates. That's disenfranchisement as well.
Disenfranchisement? Who's fault is that. Not the voters, not the delegates, and not the candidates.