Yesterday, Democratic Party lawyers explained that the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, poised to meet on Saturday to consider whether to seat some delegates from Michigan and Florida, does not have the authority to do what the Clinton campaign wants the committee to do — reverse last year’s punishment and honor the results of the non-binding primary.
For the Clinton campaign, this creates another challenge. Clinton has argued that the Florida and Michigan delegations must be seated in full, and nothing less would be acceptable. If the Rules and Bylaws Committee can’t do that, even if it wanted to, and Clinton wanted to press the matter, she’d have to take this to the Credentials Committee — which meets in August on the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
Yesterday, Speaker Pelosi said she’s unwilling to let that happen.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she will step in if necessary to make sure the presidential nomination fight between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama does not reach the Democratic National Convention — though she believes it could be resolved as early as next week.
Pelosi predicted Wednesday that a presidential nominee will emerge in the week after the final Democratic primaries on June 3, but she said “I will step in” if there is no resolution by late June regarding the seating of delegates from Florida and Michigan, the two states that defied party rules by holding early primaries.
“Because we cannot take this fight to the convention,” she said. “It must be over before then.”
It’s not altogether clear what Pelosi would do if and when she “stepped in,” but presumably it would include some effort involving superdelegates, more than a fourth of which come from the House caucus Pelosi leads.
And under the circumstances, it seems relatively safe to assume that Pelosi would resolve the nominating fight in Obama’s favor, though the House Speaker has been neutral throughout the process.
As for what happens next, Pelosi sounds cautiously optimistic.
“For now, 2,026 is the magic number” of pledged and unpledged delegates needed by a candidate to win the party’s presidential nomination, she said, but “if they decide to seat (Florida and Michigan) this weekend, there will be a new magic number.”
While saying she believes those two states’ delegates should be seated, Pelosi added that it must happen ”in a way that is not destructive to any sense of order in the party.”
“If you have no order and no discipline in terms of party rules, people will be having their primary in the year before the presidential election,” she said. “So there has to be some penalty.”
She said the party committee will come up with a formula that is “fair and accepted by both campaigns,” perhaps allowing the states 50 percent of their delegates. But “if the resolution is not appropriate, then it remains for the (Democratic National Convention) credentials committee to resolve it,” she said. Then, “it will have to happen by the end of June” or she will intervene, she said. […]
Pelosi said she has not been in contact with the Clinton or Obama campaigns on the matter because “I think it is all going in the right direction” and will be resolved “in an orderly fashion” as early as next week.
Stay tuned.