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A lawyer for the Clinton campaign fired off a letter today to the co-chairs of the DNC rules committee, outlining the argument they plan to make tomorrow. Their case hinges largely on whether Florida and Michigan have been sufficiently punished. We all agree they’ve been very bad states, the argument goes. Get over it.
The letter rejects the argument made by DNC lawyers that the committee can’t reinstate more than half of the delegations. “This conclusion is incorrect,” the Clinton letter states. “The RBC has broad power to fully reinstate the Florida and Michigan delegations” as long as the state parties “have taken provable, positive steps and acted in good faith to bring the state into compliance” with party rules. Attempts to hold re-votes count as such good-faith steps, even though they failed, according to the campaign. If the RBC buys this argument—that the states genuinely tried to comply with the rules but failed—then the Clinton camp might have a shot at reinstating all the delegates. (In Florida, at least; Michigan is messier by a long shot.)
But there’s another rule the Clinton campaign doesn’t mention. In the same part of the Delegate Selection Rules (PDF) cited by the Clinton team [Rule 20(C)(7)], it says that “other relevant Democratic party leaders and elected officials took all provable, positive steps and acted in good faith in attempting to prevent the legislative changes which resulted in state law that fails to comply with the pertinent provisions of these rules.” In other words, Florida Dems have to prove they fought tooth and nail to keep the Republican state legislature from moving the primary date up.
As we’ve pointed out before, that didn’t really happen. The effort to move the date up was initially spearheaded by a state senate Democrat, and tacitly supported by other Dems. In 2006, a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party said that “Florida Democrats are all for it.” Likewise, Michigan Democrats knew full well what they were doing when they moved their primary to Jan. 15.
So even if the Clinton camp is able to prove that Democrats made good-faith effort to hold re-votes, they’ll have a lot more trouble arguing they did everything in their power to prevent the original sin.
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In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Hillary Clinton reiterates that Florida Democrats shouldn’t be punished for the Republican legislature’s decision to move the primary up to Jan. 29. Democrats "had very little or no choice in the matter," she says. "It was a Republican decision to go forward."
It’s become accepted among Democrats that the early primary date was foisted on Florida Dems by Republicans. But the reality was more complicated. As a Miami Herald columnist pointed out in March:
- The legislation that moved up Florida's presidential primary from the second Tuesday in March to the last Tuesday in January was sponsored by a Democrat, Jeremy Ring, in the Senate, and a Republican, David Rivera, in the House.
- Every single Democrat in both chambers voted for the early date except for one House member, all of them grown-ups knowing full well that the rules of both national parties called for delegate penalties.
There’s more. Back in 2006, a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party said that "Florida Democrats are all for it." Later, when the DNC penalties became clear, Democratic leaders raised token objections. According to a great 2007 account of Florida’s deliberations by the Times’ Adam Smith (who also conducted yesterday’s interview with Clinton), some Dems tried to persuade Republicans to push the date back to the safe zone of Feb. 5 but quickly backed off. Many of them were equally eager to wield more influence in the primary season, and no one truly believed the DNC would erase all their delegates. A last-ditch amendment that would have moved the date back to Feb. 5 failed to pass.
To be sure, the date change measure was folded into a larger election-reform bill, which contained a key Democratic provision to create paper trails for electronic voting machines. That’s why the entire legislature voted for it. Plus, Dems probably didn’t expect to have all their delegates invalidated by the DNC, since party rules only called for half. They may also have declined to fight the measure because they knew they couldn't win. But to describe Florida’s Democratic voters as victims of a Republican scheme is a stretch. At the time, the scheme seemed pretty darn bipartisan.
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Last week we surveyed the proposed scenarios for fixing the Michigan/Florida mess. Two of the four solutions involved costly Florida revotes. But now the chairman of the state Democratic Party tells us they’ve decided not to hold a revote. With that, the Florida Dems have simultaneously screwed Hillary Clinton and guaranteed their own irrelevance. Here's how.
Clinton’s situation is dire. She’s now trailing Obama by about 159 pledged delegates, according to NBC. Even if she scores a big win in Pennsylvania—say it nets her an extremely generous 40 delegates—that’s still not going to be enough to catch up. (Obligatory Slate Delegate Calculator plug.) Her candidacy therefore rests on whether she can persuade superdelegates to overturn Obama’s pledged-delegate lead. But since Feb. 5, Obama has won 47 superdelegates, and Clinton has lost seven. The chances that superdelegates will have an epiphany and swing to Clinton seem awfully low. Her one trump card, however, was the prospect of winning the popular vote. If Florida had revoted and she won a huge victory that propelled her past Obama in the popular vote—itself a skewed number—she might have persuaded superdelegates to swing her way. (Obama leads by roughly 700,000 in the popular vote, but that would have dropped to about 400,000 with Florida’s Jan. 29 results factored in, according to Real Clear Politics.) But now a popular-vote victory is as far out of reach for her as Obama’s pledged-delegate lead.
Meanwhile, Florida has left itself only a handful of scenarios, all unsatisfying: 1) Split the pledged delegates 50-50, 2) Allocate the delegates proportionally based on the Jan. 29th vote, or 3) Allocate them proportionally but halve the number, à la the GOP. In each these scenarios, Florida doesn’t really matter—at least not in any way but a symbolic one. In the first case, the 50-50 split won’t affect the pledged-delegate gap, which means those pledged delegates might as well not be there. In the last two cases, the delegates will be seated at the convention only if Obama, who now controls the convention’s credentials committee, allows them. And he’ll allow them only if he’s far enough ahead that their votes won’t make up the difference. So the chances are that Florida will attend the convention, but only because including its delegates is no longer a threat to Obama.
Maybe that’s why the Obama campaign was comfortable issuing this statement late today: “We hope that all parties can agree on a fair seating of the Florida delegates so that Florida can participate in the Democratic Convention.”
Clinton's campaign, for its part, is understandably irked: “Today’s announcement brings us no closer to counting the votes of the nearly 1.7 million people who voted in January. We hope the Obama campaign shares our belief that Florida’s voters must be counted and cannot be disenfranchised.” Ah, the "D" word. Expect to hear a lot more of that in the coming weeks.
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Over the last two weeks, pressure has been building to get both Michigan and Florida’s delegations seated at the Democratic National Convention. Florida has set a self-imposed deadline of Monday to sort itself out, while Michigan has to reach a resolution by Thursday (before the state legislature goes on vacation). People have been proposing all sorts of solutions, from splitting the delegates to mail-in revotes. Because we can barely keep track of the proposals ourselves, here’s a guide to what’s on the table:
1) A Florida in-person primary. A classic do-over. Democrats show up to a polling place, vote for somebody, and go home.
Cost: An estimated $25 million. That’s a serious chunk of change for a state that has already paid for a primary. The only way that they could come up with the money is if Clinton supporters and Govs. John Corzine (New Jersey) and Ed Rendell (Pennsylania) followed through on their promise to raise money.
Whom it helps: Hillary Clinton. That’s why her campaign is the only group who wants this to happen.
Why it won’t happen: Nobody wants to shell out $25 million for a vote that’s likely to look very similar to the last one. On Jan. 29, Clinton won 55 percent to Barack Obama’s 33 percent. (John Edwards—remember him?—was still in the race at the time.) Currently, polls say she pulls 59 percent of voters and Obama grabs 39 percent. With other options on the table, Obama will never agree to this one.
2) A Florida mail-in primary. All registered Democrats would be sent a ballot in the mail at least two weeks ahead of the June 3 primary date. Ballots must be received by June 3, not postmarked by then. There would be only 50 in-person polling places across the state.
Cost: Originally, the plan was quoted at $4 million to $6 million. Now it’s inflated to $10 million to $12 million because of security precautions. The funding would almost certainly have to come from soft money, which means Corzine and Rendell may be involved, again.
Whom it helps: Clinton, but Obama could live with this option. For Obama, it gets the delegations seated and the mail-in procedure favors fervent supporters who will remember to mail in the ballot. For Clinton, she gets to grab the delegates she thinks have always rightfully belonged to her.
Why it won’t happen: It’s still unclear whether an all mail-in primary is even legal. There’s a huge hang-up on how to verify voters’ signatures that would take an emergency piece of legislation or an executive order to mollify. The Miami Herald has a great article on why that probably won’t happen. Plus, the people who like the idea—GOP Gov. and possible McCain VP Charlie Crist, Sen. Bill Nelson, and the state Democratic Party—are outnumbered by the nine Florida congressmen who don’t like the idea.
3) A Michigan in-person primary. It’s the same story as it was in January, except this time both Obama and Clinton are on the ballot.
Cost: It could run as high as $12 million, which would be paid for by soft money in one way or another. Corzine and Rendell could get tapped, or Obama and Clinton’s campaign could go dutch and split the bill 50-50.
Whom it helps: Obama. He’s already polling at a tie with Clinton, and he hasn’t stumped there. (Neither has she.) If he wins a populous swing state like Michigan, it would help him make the case to superdelegates that he’s the stronger November candidate.
Why it won’t happen: If Michigan Democrats can’t agree on the best approach, then it could fall apart. Otherwise, the outlook is good.
4) Seating Florida’s current delegation and arbitrarily tying Michigan. Everybody would agree to give up on the revote idea and come to a compromise. Florida’s delegation would be seated at the convention based on January’s vote, but each delegate would cast only half a vote as lingering punishment for cutting the line in the first place. Meanwhile, Obama and Clinton would agree to split the Michigan delegation 50-50. If you’re thinking that that doesn’t make any sense, you’re right. More on why below.
Cost: The best part of this plan: It’s free!
Whom it helps: Obama more than Clinton, most likely. He gets the Florida/Michigan monkey off his back and takes half the vote in Michigan. Obama’s campaign is on the record in favor of a 50-50 split. Plus, he gets to limit the damage in Florida, which Clinton would have won again.
Why it won’t happen: This is actually somewhat likely to happen if Michigan can’t figure out a way to stage a revote. But that doesn’t make it a good option. The idea behind seating these delegations was to make sure the two states’ Democrats weren’t disenfranchised. But splitting the vote 50-50 in Michigan essentially does disenfranchise them. Michigan would then have no impact on the race; its delegation would be window-dressing at the convention. Heck, even if you gave Michigan a bajillion delegates, it still wouldn’t matter if the candidates split its delegates 50-50. (See Slate’s delegate calculator for an illustration on how this would work.)
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Early exit polls (Disclaimer: DO NOT BELIEVE!) show a few interesting trends:
Fox News has McCain trouncing Giuliani among Hispanics, 50 to 26. Romney, meanwhile, trails at 16 percent. So much for those ads featuring his Spanish-speaking son Craig.
McCain also beats Romney among voters who listed the economy as the most important issue facing the country. (Nearly half of voters said it was, according to the AP.) McCain: 38. Romney: 34. Margin of error: +/- 4 percent. The economy is supposedly Romney’s biggest strength. That said, Romney is twice as popular as McCain among voters who list immigration as their top issue.
Florida is getting older, and McCain is benefiting. He beats Romney 40 to 31 among senior citizens. More than a third of voters in this primary are 65 or older, the AP reports.
About 43 percent of Republican voters said that Gov. Charlie Crist’s endorsement of McCain mattered to them. That sounds like a lot, given that most endorsements go completely unnoticed. Of those for whom it mattered, 51 percent voted for McCain, compared to 23 percent for Romney—naturally.
(h/t The Page)