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So Much for Healing

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.

RBC Preview: The Case Clinton Has To Make

A lawyer for the Clinton campaign fired off a letter today to the co-chairs of the DNC rules committee, outlining the argument they plan to make tomorrow. Their case hinges largely on whether Florida and Michigan have been sufficiently punished. We all agree they’ve been very bad states, the argument goes. Get over it.

The letter rejects the argument made by DNC lawyers that the committee can’t reinstate more than half of the delegations. “This conclusion is incorrect,” the Clinton letter states. “The RBC has broad power to fully reinstate the Florida and Michigan delegations” as long as the state parties “have taken provable, positive steps and acted in good faith to bring the state into compliance” with party rules. Attempts to hold re-votes count as such good-faith steps, even though they failed, according to the campaign. If the RBC buys this argument—that the states genuinely tried to comply with the rules but failed—then the Clinton camp might have a shot at reinstating all the delegates. (In Florida, at least; Michigan is messier by a long shot.)

But there’s another rule the Clinton campaign doesn’t mention. In the same part of the Delegate Selection Rules (PDF) cited by the Clinton team [Rule 20(C)(7)], it says that “other relevant Democratic party leaders and elected officials took all provable, positive steps and acted in good faith in attempting to prevent the legislative changes which resulted in state law that fails to comply with the pertinent provisions of these rules.” In other words, Florida Dems have to prove they fought tooth and nail to keep the Republican state legislature from moving the primary date up.

As we’ve pointed out before, that didn’t really happen. The effort to move the date up was initially spearheaded by a state senate Democrat, and tacitly supported by other Dems. In 2006, a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party said that “Florida Democrats are all for it.” Likewise, Michigan Democrats knew full well what they were doing when they moved their primary to Jan. 15.

So even if the Clinton camp is able to prove that Democrats made good-faith effort to hold re-votes, they’ll have a lot more trouble arguing they did everything in their power to prevent the original sin.

Can the RBC Really Reinstate All of Florida's Delegates?

The Associated Press reported that the Rules and Bylaws Committee cannot fully restore the delegates who were stripped from Michigan and Florida at its meeting, since party rules require a reduction of at least 50 percent since the two states held their primaries early. The report cites a memo sent out by DNC lawyers last night.

But on a conference call today, Clinton adviser and RBC member Tina Flournoy said that’s an "incorrect reading" of the memo. It merely presented arguments that could be made before the RBC, she said, which the committee will then have to evaluate. In other words, the Clinton campaign can still get 100 percent of the delegations seated.

Who’s right?

In strictly technical terms, Clinton’s people are. The memo, which summarizes challenges filed in Florida and Michigan to reinstate part or all of the state’s delegations, goes out of its way not to endorse one stance or another. (Michigan’s Democratic Party requested that all of the state’s delegates be reinstated; Florida DNC member Jon Ausman asked for 50 percent of Florida’s pledged delegates and all of its superdelegates to be counted.) As if to reiterate the memo’s toothlessness, the DNC just sent out a statement calling it an "intentionally neutral" analysis that "does not make specific recommendations."

But in a few key parts, the memo points out how the RBC would basically have to violate DNC rules in order to reinstate more than half the delegations. Here are some examples:

"[I]t seems clear that while the RBC could revoke its additional sanctions, leaving in place the automatic sanctions of Rule 20(C)(1), it does not have authority to reverse or prevent the imposition of those automatic sanctions."—Michigan challenge, Page 3

"If the RBC decides to go as far as it legally can in granting the MDP Challenge, it would revoke the additional December 2007 sanctions and leave in place a 50% automatic reduction in pledged delegates."—Michigan challenge, Page 6

"The legally more defensible view seems to be that the RBC had authority, in its discretion, to impose the additional sanction that it did impose in August 2007, but by the same token, that the RBC now has discretion to revoke those additional sanctions, thereby leaving in effect the automatic sanction of Rule 20(C)(1), i.e., a 50% reduction in pledged delegates."—Florida challenge, Page 6

In other words, the RBC could reinstate all of Michigan or Florida’s delegates (although only the Michigan challenge calls for full reinstatement), but that would violate its own rules. Clinton supporters will likely argue that the RBC has the power to overrule itself. As the memo puts it, the committee "is vested with broad authority … to ‘determine and resolve questions concerning the seating of delegates and alternates to the Convention.' " But it also points out that the committee's power is limited to making states comply with party rules. If there's a resolution to seat the full delegations, that will go to the Credentials Committee in late June, which would then throw it to the convention floor in August.

What does this all mean? That we’re in for a really dull RBC meeting. If the Clinton camp can’t get more than 50 percent of the delegations reinstated, they have no hope of turning the tables on Obama. (Even if they could get all of Michigan and Florida’s delegates to count, it would be virtually impossible to catch up among pledged delegates.) Both camps seem to expect mayhem—Clinton supporters are planning protests, while Obama has urged supporters not to stir things up. But chances are the scene outside the building will be a lot more dramatic than inside.