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The first half of today’s RBC meeting was all about “unity”
and healing. The second part, not so much.
After an extended lunch break, the panel returned with a set
of resolutions. The first, presented by committee member Alice Huffman,
proposed seating Florida’s
entire delegation. Even before it was voted down, Clinton supporter Tina Flournoy mourned that
the resolution had “no chance of passing this body.” “That saddens me,” she
said. “It really does.” The motion failed, but it was closer than most people
expected, 15-12. Instead, the committee unanimously passed a motion splitting
the Florida
delegation in half. When DNC Secretary Alice Germond tried to soften the mood
by describing her experience hearing MLK speak in Washington, D.C.,
the Clinton-friendly crowd booed. Okay,
you won, the boos said. Just don’t
pretend it’s democratic.
Things turned even more sour during the Michigan discussion. The committee passed a
motion adopting the Michigan Democratic Party’s 69-59 split, but giving each
delegate only half a vote. The solution nets Clinton five delegates. (If you include Florida, she netted 24 delegates today.) Even before the vote,
everyone knew how it would turn out. Clinton
supporter Don Fowler voiced his disappointment with the resolution, but said he
would vote for it anyway. He then addressed Harold Ickes. “This is my position.
I respect and love you, but this is what I think we should do.”
Ickes, after a pause, leaned into his mic. “We find it
inexplicable,” he said, speaking for himself and Clinton, “that this body that
is supposedly devoted to rules is going to fly in the face of other than … the
single most fundamental rule in the delegate selection process. That is fair
reflection.” As far as he’s concerned, fair reflection—the notion that delegate
allocation must reflect the true vote—is “analogous to the First Amendment of
the U.S. Constitution.” He went on: “The motion will hijack, remove four
delegates from Hillary Clinton.” (In Michigan’s
Jan. 15 vote, “Uncommitted” won 55 delegates; the solution gives him 59.)
“There’s been a lot of talk about party unity,” he said. “I submit to you that
hijacking four delegates is not a good way to start down the path of party
unity.”
Committee member Ben Johnson tried to push back, denouncing
the “propaganda” disseminated by “one of my colleagues that makes it sound like
this motion will hijack” some delegates. But the damage was done. Clinton supporters chanted “Denver! Denver!”
from the balcony. Every time a committee member said the word “vote,” someone
from the audience would yell, “You mean half!”
If the goal of this meeting was to take a step toward party
unity, its final moments don’t bode particularly well. At the end of his
speech, Ickes left us with “one final word: Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve
her right to take this to the Credentials Committee.” An ominous warning for party
healers everywhere.
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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.
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