NPR: The Michigan, Florida Delegates Numbers Game

The Michigan, Florida Delegates Numbers Game

(Sorry for the delay in posting. We had some Internet issues this morning. -- Tom)

Sen. Hillary Clinton's last, best hope of getting the Florida and Michigan delegates seated in a manner that favors her presidential bid rests with the 169-member Credentials Committee for the Democratic National Convention. She needs to convince enough members of this committee to support her position in order to have the nomination chips fall her way.

And as Politico.com reports, it's not looking too good so far.

In an analysis of the committee, David Paul Kuhn writes that Clinton will not have enough votes on the committee to deliver the decision she wants.

"The analysis was conducted by Matt Seyfang, an attorney and a former delegate counter for past Democratic presidential candidates including Bill Clinton in 1992 to Bill Bradley in 2000. According to his projections and a calculation of the number of committee seats that each candidate is entitled to based on their proportion to the statewide vote or the relevant caucus rules, Obama holds roughly 65 seats and Clinton 56. There are slightly more than 23 seats still to be decided in the remaining contests."

Clinton's one hope is that most of the 25 members appointed to the committee by party Chairman Howard Dean will swing her way. But several bloggers and pundits in the past month have discussed how carefully Dean has selected the committee -- appointing many people who worked on his presidential campaign -- making sure that they are loyal to him before they are loyal to anyone else. And Dean's position on the Florida and Michigan delegates has been pretty clear so far -- the rules are the rules and those two states broke them.

But here is the Democrat's nightmare: Clinton has already hit the 20 percent threshold needed to create a minority report. So even if a majority of the committee support Obama's position, both the majority and minority reports must be presented and voted on by all seated convention delegates.

And that could be a contentious affair for sure.

11:30 AM ET | 04- 1-2008 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

I guess this just shows Howard Dean is as good a party chairman as he was a presidential candidate.

Sent by Susan | 2:00 PM ET | 04-01-2008

It's really like watching sausage being made by chimpanzees on a hot day in a closed garage. Fascinating, disturbing and funny.

As was said before, we best keep these people very far from tinkering with our healthcare system.

Sent by deek | 3:12 PM ET | 04-01-2008

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Tom Regan

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