Today’s the day. The Clash in the Capital. The Dispute in DC. The Scuffle in the Swamp. The Fracas at … well, you get the idea.
There’s a very good chance that today’s meeting of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will be anti-climactic, but as political theater goes, this is reasonably interesting stuff.
When Democratic Party leaders voted on Aug. 25, 2007, to sanction Florida Democrats for moving up the date of their presidential primary, no one anticipated that the decision would lead to a tense showdown that will help decide the outcome of the nomination battle between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Today, the 30 members of the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will hear challenges to that decision and a later ruling, which together barred delegations from Florida and Michigan from the national convention in Denver because those states violated the party’s rules governing the nomination process.
Democrats on and off the committee said yesterday that a compromise appears likely that would restore half of the delegations from each state, although the precise terms remained under discussion. “It’s clear something’s going to be worked out,” said Carol Fowler, the party chair in South Carolina and a member of the rules committee.
Compromise scenarios continue to be bandied about, with the most interest in a plan to halve the votes for all of the Florida delegates, giving Clinton a net gain of 19, and making the popular vote from the state count. Michigan, meanwhile, would be split 50-50, after also being halved.
That’s clearly not what the Clinton campaign will demand. Despite believing the polar opposite earlier this year, Clinton’s team will urge the RBC to honor the non-binding results just as they are. This seems very unlikely.
As the WaPo’s Dan Balz noted, “[T]he real question is whether both sides — and the two states — are prepared to accept what the committee decides, or will instead take their grievances to the party’s credentials committee next month or possibly to the convention in August.”
Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist and veteran of rules battles, added, “What’s at stake is whether this nominating process will come to a quick conclusion in a way that unifies the party, or whether it will drag on for weeks and perhaps months in a way that threatens party unity and potentially hurts the nominee and the party.”
Quite right. Even if the Clinton campaign got everything it wanted from the RBC — a highly unlikely scenario — Clinton still wouldn’t be in a position to overtake Obama in the delegate count. But the Clinton campaign nevertheless believes it sway enough superdelegates to win the nomination if it can sufficiently narrow the gap with the results of the non-binding primaries.
It leads to a situation similar to the beginning of an awkward interrogation: we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. They’re both, in this case, pretty straightforward.
The easy way: The RBC meets and tries to reach some kind of accommodation. Clinton gains some delegates, Florida and Michigan get seated, and the nominating fight effectively wraps up over the next several days, with Obama getting the party’s nod. The general election phase of the campaign, assuming it hasn’t already begun, would start before the end of the week.
The hard way: The RBC meets and tries to reach some kind of accommodation, which the Clinton campaign finds unacceptable. They vow to take the issue to the DNC’s Credentials Committee, which meets in Denver on the first day of the party’s national convention. Obama would likely claim he has the nomination later this week, but the Clinton campaign would insist it’s illegitimate, and the nominating fight would continue to drag on through August.
As publius summarized nicely, “In the days ahead, the Clintons have the power either to unite the party going into the fall, or to leave a lasting, poisonous, and potentially-fatal schism. At this point, it’s not clear what path they’ll choose.”
MSNBC had a helpful rundown on what to expect procedurally today, but to summarize, the meeting began this morning with remarks from DNC chairman Howard Dean and Rules committee co-chairs Alexis Herman and James Roosevelt. That’s followed by Florida’s challenge, Michigan’s challenge, and then lunch. Committee members will then work towards some kind of resolution, which will require a majority of the 30-person panel (13 back Clinton, eight back Obama, nine are uncommitted). The conclusion could be pushed to tomorrow. All the while, WomenCountPAC will host a rally/protest outside the hotel where the meeting is taking place.
If you are inclined to watch the proceedings, here you go: