Florida and Michigan

What will the DNC do about Florida and Michigan? They ran their unauthorized primaries, and Hillary won both in a walkover, while Obama stayed away, perhaps naively.

A revote has been mentioned in Florida, and that might be the right approach, though the Clinton camp would never agree to it willingly.

If the nomination contest gets to Denver unresolved, I would expect a floor fight to determine how to seat these delegations. If that happens, I think Clinton wins, but democracy and the Democratic Party lose.

The real question is who is on the Credentials Committee. The chairs are Alexis Herman, James Roosevelt Jr., and Eliseo Roques-Arroyo. Herman was Bill Clinton's secretary of labor, and I've never heard of Roques-Arroyo before, but a little googling shows that he worked in the Clinton White House. Buzzflash, too.

That leaves Jim Roosevelt, who also worked in the Clinton Administration, and I'm not optimistic that his rulings will reflect anything but his desired outcome. I only have two experiences with him, but they were both warnings.

The Massachusetts Democratic Party Convention had passed a rules change about the number of delegates allowed each town, and the language wasn't completely clear, so Roosevelt had to make a ruling. Fair enough. The problem was that his ruling was impossible to reconcile with the passed language.

The second case involved a challenge from the floor of another state convention to a ruling of the chair, Phil Johnston, about a voice vote that was clearly not fairly callable. Roosevelt backed Johnston's call, which just happened to be what the party apparatus wanted.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Obama had better win 2208 delegates instead of just 2025 if he wants to be the nominee. I expect the sub rosa Florida and Michigan delegations to be seated.

Update: Close to 500 people have seen this page, yet no one has left a comment!

Update (3/21/08): Could have a happy ending yet!