More On Imminent Death Of Michigan Primary....

This dispatch from the MIRS News Service in Michigan (no link)

Senate Democrats emerged from a closed-door caucus this morning and proclaimed that a fledging idea floated by top Michigan Democrats to create a special June 3 primary election is all but dead.

"The votes aren't there to do it," said Sen. Buzz THOMAS (D-Detroit), the co-chair of the Barack OBAMA campaign in Michigan

Sen. Gretchen WHITMER, a supporter of Hillary CLINTON, also conceded the chances of a June 3 redo of the Democratic presidential primary were slim. She stopped short of declaring it dead, saying instead that it was "on life support" and in need of CPR.

The Legislature would need to approve a bill by a two-third vote to put in place a June 3 special primary that would replace the results of the Jan. 15 presidential primary, which the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is not recognizing because the early date violated national party rules.

Comments

If Clinton's people are unable to leverage new elections in MI & FL (not enough political insider firepower) why should we believe she can leverage enough super-delegates to win the nomination?

Posted by Bill White | March 18, 2008 12:22 PM

Clinton's political firepower is what is causing the votes to fail, fool.

No way Florida and Michigan's voters are not going to be represented at the DNC because it will damage the Democrats standing at the general election; and Clinton wants the old votes to stand because her lead would likely be slashed considerably if there was a revote. This is more bad news for Obama.

The best Obama can hope for is for Florida and Michigan to have their delegate count cut in half.

Posted by Peter Jarvis | March 18, 2008 12:50 PM

There is no way the Waffle Queen and King are going to get any where near the White House. Slick Willey and the collagen bloated old bag are history and a sad history at that. Stuff 'em and mount 'em in a museum for the flies to nest in.

Posted by Robert Portney | March 18, 2008 1:00 PM

It seems that the Republicans, having settled on a candidate in John McCain, are now concentrating on putting the less viable Hillary Clinton in place as his opponent. Barack Obama is being railroaded; the establishment obviously took his rhetoric on change quite seriously to have organized so solidly against him.

Posted by Paul Sullivan | March 18, 2008 1:43 PM

Peter,

Actually Obama can absolutely hope for more than that. Those delegations will probably not be seated at all until after the first ballot. All that needs to happen is nothing. The DNC has already made their decision and made it clear that they will stick with it. It is very easy for nothing to keep happening for a few months.

Short of that, one of the things that has been floating around is this idea of splitting the delegations 50/50 between Obama and Clinton in order to address the flawed votes and then seating them that way. There are good cases to be made against this idea, but it would be a way for the DNC to seat MI and FL delegations while still punishing those states. By splitting the delegations 50/50, neither state is able to push the outcome of the election in either direction. So that's another very nice thing that Obama can hope for.

Obama wins no matter what. The one thing that we can see is absolutely not going to happen is the idea of the DNC putting it's tail between it's legs and seating those delegations as they are. If they aren't seated, Obama is way ahead. If they are split 50/50, Obama has the same lead. If they are cut in half, Clinton would pick up so few delegates that she would still be way behind.

If she'd racked up some sort of increase to her margin in Texas and Ohio, then this whole thing might be meaningful. But after the Texas caucus numbers finally came in, along with Obama's added delegates in California plus his pick up 9 or 10 former Edwards delegates in Iowa on Saturday, Clinton has not gained any ground at all over where she was after Obama's 11 contest winning streak. She's in the exact same delegate hole that she was in last month. Florida and Michigan can't help her and won't change the outcome of the election no matter what is decided. The whole thing is completely academic. We might as well be debating Denis Kuchinich's precise caucus results in Iowa. It's about as meaningful.

Posted by Jackson Landers | March 18, 2008 2:19 PM

Well, it's still quite possible that both MI and FL will be seated as 'voted' on in January. This will happen after Obama wins the pledged delegate and popular vote totals, the vast majority of superdelegates endorse him, and the small ill-gotten gains HRC made in those states become irrelevant to a first-ballot victory for Obama.

Posted by Jerold Paulson | March 18, 2008 3:06 PM

Florida and Michigan can't help her and won't change the outcome of the election no matter what is decided.

If this were the case, the Obama campaign would be strongly advocating for full primary revotes, and offering to split the cost with the Clinton campaign.

This would be the cleanest and fairest way to do it. Sure, we'd wouldn't be "punishing" Michigan and Florida with this course of action. We'd merely be giving the Democratic party's eventual nominee the strongest possible shot at taking these two states in the general election. Which I thought was a higher priority than state legislature punishment. And by revoting Michigan and Florida, Clinton would be left without any basis on which to challenge the legitimacy of the process. Unless Obama's margin over Clinton becomes huge, and/or unless he sews up a nominating majority, the failure to count Michigan and Florida will constitute dark clouds over the convention, and possibly even give Hillary Clinton some options for legal action.

Dumb.

Posted by The Democratic Pary is anything but | March 18, 2008 3:20 PM