Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Open Thread: King Solomon’s Wisdom and Our Baby Edition

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From Mark Halperin’s The Page

Party’s legal experts write in memo ahead of Saturday’s meeting that the two states must lose at least half of their delegates for moving up their contests.

Says the Rules Committee doesn’t have the authority to seat full delegations, something the Clinton camp has been advocating.

UPDATE: Politico provides the challenges and analyses for FL & MI here

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  1. that no delegates can be awarded to somebody without representing votes cast for that person.

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    Rule 13.A. “Fair Reflection of Presidential Preference.”
    Delegates shall be allocated in a fashion that fairly reflects the expressed presidential preference or uncommitted status of the primary voters.

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    p>so I don’t understand how they can arbitrarily seat Obama delegates when he wasn’t on the ballot in Michigan. Florida might be easier to get away with seating proportional to the primary and cut the number in half for a punishment.

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    p>The only fair thing is to seat enough delegates so that Michigan and Florida are given representation, but not enough to overturn Obama’s lead that he fairly obtained playing within the rules.

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    p>If Florida and Michigan are seated completely based upon their primaries, as HRC wants, it not only wouldn’t be fair, but would encourage every state to break the rules in 2012. How do we feel about the first primary of the 2012 season being in August 2011?

    • … why it is more fair to seat some of the delegation rather than follow through with the promised consequence of no seating?  Do we really want to establish a precedent that the party won’t follow through with promised consequences?  Are we weakening the national party’s control over its own processes?  Will there be consequences in the next cycle?

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      p>I’m not trying to be harsh here.  Admittedly, I lean Obama but will be very happy with a Democrat in either case.  But I can’t help but wonder what the point was if we renege on any consequences.

      • but I am afraid of the ramifications if Michigan and Florida were completely left out. The voters there would, with some good reason, feel disenfranchised. After all, it wasn’t the voters fault that rules are broken.

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        p>I think that as long as Michigan and Florida delegates are not seated in a great enough number to potentially reverse the preference of the other 48 states, they should have some delegates seated. By doing it this way, the states would still punished for moving up the primaries because 1) no candidates came and spent money in their state and 2) they had no ultimate influence on the selection of nominee.

      • For the last several cycles both parties had chosen a nominee fairly early on.  When these rules were written nobody imagined that these decisions would be of any consequence, thus the fallout was not considered.  MI and FL probably figured their victors would get headlines and momentum and their delegates would ultimately be seated for the sake of making nice because it would make no mathematical difference anyway.  We can “coulda, shoulda, woulda” this to death regarding foresight on the part of the rule makers.  Now is the time to figure out how to get out of this mess without pointing fingers as to how we got into it.  I completely favor Michigan’s challenge on the merits but acknowledge the lack of RBC authority, so I hope the Credentials Committee and plenary convention will address it.  The best long-term outcome is that the party learns from this and rewrites the rules in 2012 without room for any discretion, waivers, or playing favorites.  We need to find a way to give every state an equal shot.  I find myself leaning more toward a national primary day.

        • Based on this language, a strong argument can be made that, while the RBC has authority to revoke the discretionary additional sanctions imposed under Rule 20(C)(5), the RBC cannot revoke or prevent the operation of the automatic sanction provision of Rule 20(C)(1) which, by its terms and the terms of Rule 20(C)(4), takes effect without any action of the RBC.

          To be sure, the Credentials Committee of the Convention is vested with broad authority, under the, to “determine and resolve questions concerning the seating of delegates and alternates to the Convention.” As the Party’s highest authority, the Convention itself, on the recommendation of the Credentials Committee, could arguably determine that the MDP should be provide all the delegate positions originally allocated to it, without regard to the sanctions imposed by the Delegate Selection Rules. By contrast, however, the RBC’s authority is limited to hearing challenges regarding alleged violations of an approved Delegate Selection Plan, Delegate Selection Rules 20(B)(2), and in resolving such challenges the RBC is limited to finding that actions taken in the delegate selection process comply or do not comply with the State Party’s delegate selection plan and to requiring corrective action to bring about compliance.7

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          p>A “half vote” sanction would provide for more inclusion and participation in what promises to be a “mother of all conventions.”

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          p>If by Denver, by using “one delegate = half vote,” we have a unified party beyond dispute; then the floor could consider allowing full participation of the FL & MI delegations. Wouldn’t that be grand?

    • Define fair.  Define uncommitted in a race that had only a few declared candidates in the race.

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      p>I don’t think Rule 13.A dictates anything at all!  In my few, it’s “fair” to presume that most of the uncommitted votes in MI were for Obama, Lanny Davis’s Bizarro Logic notwithstanding (an aside- Lanny’s “logic” is the most astounding pile of BS I’ve seen in print in a long while, and that’s saying something!  The topper is, of course, the “Solomonic compromise” that gives Hillary “only” one more uncommitted MI delegate than Obama, as clearly most of the people who expressly did not vote for Hillary were actually voting for Hillary!  But I digress).

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      p>Other than that, I agree with you.  Only I wouldn’t say it’s the only “fair” solution, I would say it’s the only “practical” solution.  Shutting out MI and FL is a bad idea, in pragmatic terms, but fully seating them is also a bad idea, in pragmatic terms (there should be some penalty for jumping the start, otherwise 2012 will be even worse).

      • “practical” is a better term than “fair” in this case. I don’t think any possible outcome at this point will be truly “fair”.

    • http://www.talkingpointsmemo.c…

      Therefore, following the principle of fair reflection of presidential preference, it can at least be said that the “Uncommitted” delegate positions should be considered as being allocated collectively to the candidates whose names did not appear on the ballot: Senator Barack Obama, former Senator John Edwards, Senator Joseph Biden and Governor Bill Richardson.

      Based on this logic, a strong argument can be made that in awarding delegate positions to “Uncommitted” status in the unusual circumstances presented by the Michigan challenge, the RBC would at least have the authority to make special provisions for the exercise of candidate right of approval in the selection of delegates to fill these pledged “Uncommitted” positions.
      -snip

      This language suggests that uncommitted status is to be treated as a presidential candidate to the greatest extent possible in the candidate right of approval process.
      -snip

      At the least it would appear that the RBC could grant to those candidates-the ones who withdrew their names from the January 15 primary ballot – collectively the right to exercise candidate right of approval with respect to the eligibility of persons to be considered to fill the “Uncommitted” pledged delegate slots. It is possible that these candidates-only one of whom actively remains in the race-could work out among themselves the mechanics of approving the persons to be considered for the “Uncommitted” pledged delegate positions.

  2. I’ve said it before- there is absolutely nothing they can do this weekend that isn’t going to piss off someone, somewhere.  They could decide to individually interview every single voter in FL and MI and give out free ice cream at the same time and someone’s going to find a way to be oppressed.

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