Obama: Hey I have An Idea, Let’s Seat The Florida And Michigan Delegates
Gee, I wonder what changed his mind? Remember this:
“I’ll leave it up to the Democratic National Committee to make a decision about how to resolve it,” Obama told ABC News last night. “But I certainly want to make sure that we’ve got Michigan and Florida delegates at the convention in some fashion.”
Keep in mind, it was the rules committee that clinched the nomination for Obama:
The decision by the party’s Rules Committee raised slightly the total delegates Obama needs to clinch the nomination. Clinton advisers conceded privately he will likely hit the magic number after the final primaries are held Tuesday night, but said the ruling threatened to dash any hopes of a unified party.
The resolution increased the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination to 2,118, leaving Obama just 66 delegates away from the majority needed to secure the nomination.
“Our main goal is to get this resolved so we can focus on winning Michigan and Florida,” Obama said while campaigning in South Dakota. “There were compromises. … I’m glad the DNC worked it through and I hope we can start focusing on substance as opposed to process.”
But as Clinton tried to catch up to Obama’s delegate lead, she has argued that the votes of the 2.3 million people who participated in the elections must be recognized.
Obama supporters argued that they did compromise by allowing her to take the majority of delegates in two contests where he didn’t campaign.
The sticking point was Michigan, where Obama’s name was not on the ballot.
Clinton’s camp insisted Obama shouldn’t get any pledged delegates in Michigan since he chose not to put his name on the ballot, and she should get 73 pledged delegates with 55 uncommitted. Obama’s team insisted the only fair solution was to split the pledged delegates in half between the two campaigns, with 64 each.
The committee agreed on a compromise offered by the Michigan Democratic Party that would split the difference, allowing Clinton to take 69 delegates and Obama 59. Each delegate would get half a vote at the convention, according to the deal.
The deal passed 19-8. Thirteen members of the committee had endorsed Clinton for president, so she wasn’t even able to keep her supporters together.
Allan Katz, a Rules Committee member and Obama supporter, said the Obama campaign had enough votes on the committee to support the campaign’s proposal to split the delegates 50-50 in Michigan. Ultimately, the campaign agreed instead to support the compromise negotiated by the Michigan Democratic Party as a way to resolve the matter.
“The ironic thing is Obama had the majority of that committee,” Katz said. “The Obama campaign wants to move on and compromise. We did not muscle our way through it. It was a wise decision from a well run and wise campaign that will reverberate.”
But the irate reaction from Clinton’s campaign and her supporters in the sharply divided audience shows Obama will have a long way to go to bring the party together after a long and divisive primary. ‘We just blew the election!’
“We just blew the election!” a woman in the audience shouted. The crowd was divided between cheering Obama supporters and booing Clinton supporters.“This isn’t unity! Count all the votes!” another audience member yelled.
Why didn’t he ask that all the delegates be seated back in June?
Trackposted to Full Metal Cynic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Mark My Words, A Blog For All, Right Truth, Shadowscope, DragonLady’s World, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Nuke’s, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, third world county, Political Byline, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, and Dumb Ox Daily News, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
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