Rules Committee ends Clinton chances: Obama crosses threshold

Will the Democrats be able to attract the Hillary Clinton voters to Obama? I don't think that the Rules Committee had much choice. The way I read it, there were no winners.

His resignation is another of his political moves. It is a day late and a dollar short.

"I could no more dis-associate myself from the Rev. Wright than I could dis-associate myself from the black church". Barack Hussein Obama

Well, so much for that lie.

And I don't think he should get ANY of the delegates from Michigan, HE took his name off the ballot there.
But that's ok, he just pissed off a LOT of voters.

That was the plan from the beginnning. Gve something that looks like a concession to Clinton, but make sure it keeps her from having a better or even equal chance than the Messiah Obama. They are seeking "unity" and "Change", what they are truly doing is continuing the sideshow they created and pushing a candidate that gets less likely to be elected every day no matter what church he belongs to.

uh oh, unhappy people out there.

yes Joe, as you perceive, no winners, only those who did not lose and those with a chip on their shoulder.

Well damn. My only saving grace: I can write in her name!

Rules are rules. These delegations should have not been seated, that was already ruled on. This is a compromise however to make everyone sort of happy. The Clinton camp did not want to give away anything. Harold Ickes was a total ass. As much as he used the word 'ass' (I believe 5 times).

The Florida delegation and the MI delegations are happy. The Clinton camp wanted to push it. On behalf of who?

Michigan proposed the 69-59 and Clinton people (Tina Fourloy and Ickes) went after then. Senator Levin shot right back at them. Now they will alienate the state parties. Great!

One clarification Chris. He as not crossed the treshold. In fact now he needs about 30 supers. He is 68 away total. Before the ruling he was 41 away and did not need supers to cross. the new number is 21xx.

Harold Ickes sealed his fate today. He's no longer a player in Democratic national politics. His comments before the vote were inexcusable. If that is the temperment of the Clinton campaign and if Ickes and the those fanaticatical Clinton partisans at the hearing reflect the temperment of the candidate then good riddence.

As Alan says, the rules are the rules. The RBC did the best they could to fairly decide a difficult issue. Neither campaign got what they wanted.

Consider though that even if the RBC would have decided somehow to give ALL the delegates to Clinton that she wanted (including giving zero delegates to Obama for Michigan), the nomination result would not have changed. Even under such a favorable outcome to Clinton she would not overtake Obama in pledged delegates or total delegates or states won.

Obama is now over the non-FL/MI threshold number, but the number of delegates needed to reach the threshold is now higher (I believe it's 2118 with the compromise). Obama still leads and even after Clinton wins most of the delegates in today's Puerto Rico primary and they split the delegates in two final primaries on Tuesday, Obama will still lead in both pledged and total delegates. By the end of next week I suspect the vast majority of remaining superdelegates will indicate their commitments.

And before everyone gets all upset about "the Rules committee," it should be kept in mind that 50% of the eligible voters on the RBC were Clinton supporters.

Of the 30 members of the RBC, Hillary Clinton had 14 supporters, of which 13 were eligible to vote (a FL delegate who is a supporter could not vote). On the other hand, Obama had only 6 voting members, with the rest of the committee undeclared for either candidate. Of the uncommitted group, co-chairs do not vote on the resolutions, and a MI undeclared delegate could not vote for the same reasons as the FL delegate. That brings the total voting members to 26 delegates. Based on this count, 50 percent of voting delegates were Clinton supporters, and less than 25% were Obama supporters.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the resolution of the FL and MI situation was not about Clinton or Obama, but about the party. Both resolutions passed with the help of the Clinton delegates. For example, the MI resolution was objected to by 8 of the Clinton delegates but agreed to by the remaining 5 Clinton delegates.

The RBC actually went along with a compromise presented by the MI State delegation (that's where the 69-59 split came from). The only thing that the RBC insisted on is the sanction to one-half vote for each delegate for violating the DNC calendar rules.

So the Ickes theatrics was a stunt, that frankly embarrassed him and his candidate.

For the FL delegates, the vote was unanimous in favor of the proposal from the Florida delegation. That means 100% of the Clinton supporters on the RBC (which you recall is 1/2 the eligible voters on the RBC) all voted for the compromise proposal. All of them.

So suggesting that the RBC or the Obama campaigns somehow kept Clinton from getting any delegates is preposterous and incredibly disingenuous on the part of the Clinton camp.

David- I agree with you. I think there is a sense of entitlement at work in the minds of the Clinton camp. Oh no, that made me sound like Pfleger- but it is what it is, why hide from the truth. And now Ickes wants the issue taken to the floor of the Convention in August with the cameras running and every Republican in the country laughing with glee? That's a new low. Even in the bad old days, those kinds of ferocious issues were usually dealt with in the back rooms, not on tv.

Thanks for the numbers update, Alan and David. The Obama camp did indeed pursue a compromise solution, if you consider that he now needs more superdelegates than he did previously. But it is also true that the decision may finally make it impossible for her to win.

Yeah, now she alienated Florida and Michigan state representatives. Keep in mind that Florida came in asking for 50%. Michigan came in asking for 100% but proposed 69-59% of the votes. Something Ickes went toe to toe with Senator Levin. Why go after the states request. Who is she fighting for? She can fight for the voters more than their state representatives?
Good move for Hillary to piss their supers now that they have half a vote.

She is pissed because this debunks her pop vote argument. I say half the popular vote figures too, LOL!!!

Well, I was just a centrist that was visiting the Democratic party, because Hillary was in it. Thanks for the memories.

Good riddance. Anyone brought in by Hillary is headache. After seeing her supporters I am ashamed to be in the same party. Changing my registration on November 5th! Good riddance for me too. Don't want to be associated with anything people remotely identifying to Hillary Clinton are involved in.

?

Changing registration to what?

just don't go libertarian, those guys are weird. Uh oh, I should not be saying that. But some of the Bob Barr crowd strike me as people who are too conservative to accept McCain. You have to be pretty conservative for that. mcCain has gone more conservative as the campaign has progressed.

The very presence of Ron Paul at the Republican party convention, this weekend in Minnesota, galvanized the crowd in favor of McCain.

The Democratic party (DFL) convention is this next weekend at the same place...

It would be easier for me to agree with what has been said if the DNC hadn't started asking Clinton to quit when there were only 25 delegates separating them. Since then they have continued to bully her to drop out even through there were states yet to vote. If Clinton and Obama's positions had been reversed, there would have been riots in the streets. However, since Clinton is a woman, they felt it was alright. I'm an indepedendent and I will be writing Clinton in.

Theresa- thanks for not being willing to vote for mccain at least. some Hillary fans are threatening that.

I am a Hillary fan and I have spent a lot of time looking at John McCain, who I actually like. I will have several choices in November.

Write Hillary's name in.
Vote for John McCain -
Vote for Ralph Nader - a great candidate, but he can't win.

My choice will most likely be McCain, but if Hillary fights, I will fight with her and vote for her.

Don B., the way I heard it, ALL the Democratic candidates agreed to withhold (not withdraw) their names from the Michigan primary ballot because they KNEW the primary was being held too early ~ in violation of of DMC protocal. One little thing, Clinton lied and went forward anyway. When the primary "didn't count", she pushed and shoved her rich bitch attitude into what we've ended up with now.

Hey, I could be wrong........but that's my understanding.

Aunt Boni- I believe your facts are right, but leave out the name calling! Not that we are going to change Mary Ann's plans with anything we say.

The write-in option may be problematic. Electronic voting machines may consider the entire ballot as invalid, as they did in Michigan with the Obama write-ins.