Why didn't he give her the four measly delegates?

[Adelante]

Here is a theory:

But I do think that the way that the Democratic campaign ends matters. Obama is going to have a rough go of things if a perception sets in amongst the silent majority of Clinton supporters that he stole the nomination from their girl. Clinton is categorically not going to win the Democratic nomination. It is too late for her campaign to do or say anything that might change that equation. But the tone of her campaign from this point forward could have a significant impact on Obama's chances in November. In particular, argumentation that Obama is an illegitimate nominee could be hard to walk back later.

It is interesting to consider this in light of yesterday's decision on Michigan. Chuck Todd writes that Obama actually had the votes on the Rules & Bylaws Committee to earn an even delegate split out of Michigan. But instead, he deferred to Carl Levin's 69-59 plan. How come? Because the delegate margin isn't close enough to matter, and giving Clinton some kind of a "win" in Michigan will help to undercut the perception that delegate shenanigans caused the nomination to be stolen from her.

It might be asked: why not instead sign off Clinton the 73-55 delegate split that her campaign desired? It's only a difference of a few delegates.

Well, if you did that, you'd be reflecting the Clinton/uncommitted preference from the unsanctioned primary. Which means that you'd be tending to legitimate the results of that primary. Which means that Clinton would have had a stronger claim for including Michigan in her popular vote count. And the popular vote count is different way that Clinton has tended to imply that Obama's nomination is not legitimate. If Clinton hadn't pushed the popular vote meme so noisily, in other words, Obama would probably have given her those four extra delegates.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/06/now-it-matters.html

[KittyWampus]

1. actually, giving either Florida or Michigan anything other than 50/50 split attempts to

legitimize an invalid electoral process.

[Adelante]

4. I agree absolutely

That's what I've said for months.

[TahitiNut]

21. Nonsense.

0/0 would be far more legitimate. :shrug:

[MercutioATC]

2. Because then they would have demanded the rest of them.

Their claim is that "Uncommitted" is a binding vote and it was wrong to assign these voters to Obama.

That said, they'd spin the concession as "Even Senator Obama knows that the RBC made the wrong decision."

[mcctatas]

3. Correct me if I'm wrong...

but he didn't "give" her anything, the R and B board did...

[Adelante]

9. Yes, the RBC gave them

But there were two proposals. Obama had the votes for 50-50, which would have been better for him. He could have pulled that off, but went for the 69-59 plan, because it was the more diplomatic thing to do. The RBC would have voted either one.

[my3boyz]

14. Most of the Clinton people on the board did not want that. They

would have only approved that by one or two votes. Once Obama agreed to what Michigan wanted then he was able to get a majority. He wanted to make sure it did not seem like the Obama people were making the decision. It looked better when there was a mix of supporters.

[Adelante]

17. Yeah, it was the right thing nt

[Occam Bandage]

5. I was starting my response, and then realized it was already in the OP.

Because doing so would legitimize the results of MI.

[Adelante]

13. I hadn't thought of it

But it could be.

[Lucky 13]

6. He's given her enough.

She's lucky she got what she did.

[Diamonique]

7. It wasn't up to him to "give" or "take" anything.

The RBC voted yes to the proposals submitted by each state. Florida and Michigan came up with those proposals.. not Obama.

[Ravy]

16. The Florida proposal gave full votes to the superdelegates. They did not pass it.

But they came close enough to suit me (I live in Florida).

Like the OP, I am baffled over them not going for the unity and giving her the four votes (halved to two).

As it is, they did give her something.. an argument to take to her supporters and the super delegates.

[polichick]

8. Good grief, as it is he didn't push for 50/50 even though he had the votes...

Doesn't matter - nothing would, except giving her the nomination.

[AllentownJake]

10. Show of power

If he won 50/50 by one vote she'd mistake that for weakness. Winning by the margins on the other proposal shows what will happen at the convention or credentials committee.

[dansolo]

11. That wasn't the Michigan proposal

It is the states, o the campaigns, that decide on the delegate allocation. I wouldn't have had a problem if the split went 73-55, but since the MI proposal was for a 69-59 split, the committee decided to approve their proposal as-is.

[Ravy]

12. That was made arguably invalid because of the DNC heavy hand.

If they were going to restore the votes, as they all indicated that they wanted to do all along, they should have done it in December or so when it was apparent that no other states were going to move.

It was the DNC that said the votes would not count, only to see the need to count them later.

[Elspeth]

15. If you read carefully, it sounds like a lose-lose for Obama there

Give the 4: legitimate the primary
Take the 4: Enrage a good portion of the Dem base who support Clinton

Not a good spot to get into.

[bigbrother05]

18. He backed the state parties at the RBC. He supported MI/FL.

[Yael]

19. Two reasons

1. Both states were allowed to come to their own decisions and those decisions were accepted by the committee. No one "won" but the states that put them in the position in the first place. It allowed them to save face with their constituents.

2. Precedent was set.

[RBInMaine]

20. He gave her more than he had to, AND the MI compromise was crafted by MI Dems. CASE CLOSED !!

[stillcool]

22. It wasn't Obama's to give...

The Michigan State Democratic Party declared their own election to be invalid. Then the Michigan State Democratic Party crafted their own proposal. And it was accepted. You can not apportion delegates by the results of an invalid election.

[Adelante]

23. Salon has some background

Even though they privately nurtured few illusions that in Michigan they could escape the half-vote penalty exacted on Florida, the Clinton forces did hope that the state's delegation would be seated based on the primary results, which would net Clinton nine convention votes (18 flesh-and-blood delegates). They also had dreams of prevailing on an arcane, but conceivably significant, point: depriving Obama of any veto power over the delegates on the Michigan "Uncommitted" slate. Democratic rules buttressed the Clinton arguments over Michigan, since there is an overwhelming bias toward accepting primary results as valid and the "Uncommitted" option is, bizarrely enough, treated as if it were an actual candidate.

But politics is ultimately about votes, and Clinton -- even though she had 13 supporters on the rules committee -- did not have them. When the committee took test votes over lunch (and holdouts like Donna Brazile, Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager, finally chose sides), there was a surprising 14-to-13 majority for evenly dividing the Michigan delegation between Obama and Clinton. (The co-chairs of the committee, Alexis Herman and James Roosevelt, only vote in case of ties, while Mark Brewer, the Michigan party chairman, could not vote on matters affecting his state). Such a split-the-difference verdict in Michigan would have been the most generous possible outcome for Obama, since even the state party's own compromise proposal gave Clinton a five-vote (10-delegate) edge.

But the Obama supporters also recognized that overturning the results of the Michigan primary by a one-vote margin in the rules committee would be a Pyrrhic victory. Brewer warned his colleagues during the luncheon that such a result would ruin the Democratic Party in Michigan, since the Clinton supporters would be enraged over the sellout. Desperate to salvage anything from the wreckage, five Clinton supporters on the committee (Don Fowler, Mame Reilly, Elaine Kamarck, Michael Steed and Alice Huffman) belatedly embraced the compromise floated by Brewer and the Michigan party that awarded Clinton a 10-delegate edge. This required a bit of intellectual backtracking since during the earlier public session, Fowler, Reilly and Kamarck had all critiqued the Michigan proposal as arbitrary and irrational in its arithmetic that trimmed Clinton's 73-to-55 delegate margin from the primary to a 69-59 Clinton-Obama split.

-snip

After the committee adjourned, Steed, a former DNC official, explained the logic behind the compromise in an interview, saying, "Our goal was what could be done to unify the party. The only unity proposal on the table was the Michigan proposal, so we accepted it." Kamarck, a former top Gore aide, put it simply, "It was the only answer."

In theory, Saturday's rules committee Michigan decision can be appealed to a new body -- the convention's Credentials Committee, when it comes into existence in July. Ickes, in fact, raised just that specter in his final remarks on the Michigan vote and the Clinton acolytes in the audience chanted, "Denver! Denver!" But, in reality, a formal challenge of Saturday's decision can only be brought by a Michigan convention delegate, not by the Clinton campaign itself. The odds are prodigious that -- under almost any scenario -- the four votes that Clinton theoretically lost in the rules committee will not matter by Denver.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/01/dnc/

[stray cat]

24. Isn't that up to the rules committee and trying to follow the will of the people?