NOTE: This has been diaried earlier this morning. It was very early so I missed it, but feel free to comment there or see this as a continuation. I think it's important so I'm keeping this up to raise the visibility for those of us who woke up later, but not intended to step on other diaries.
Quick intro to this diary that I will update shortly, but it's pretty big news. Via The Page:
Party’s legal experts write in memo ahead of Saturday’s meeting that the two states must lose at least half of their delegates for moving up their contests.
Says the Rules Committee doesn’t have the authority to seat full delegations, something the Clinton camp has been advocating. (emphasis mine)
More from the full memo:
Democratic National Committee rules require that the two states lose at least half of their convention delegates for holding elections too early, the party's legal experts wrote in a 38-page memo.
The memo was sent late Tuesday to the 30 members of the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee, which plans to meet Saturday at a Washington hotel. The committee is considering ways to include the two important general election battlegrounds at the nominating convention in August, and the staff analysis says seating half the delegates is "as far as it legally can" go.
And there's more:
The DNC staff analysis argues that the Rules and Bylaws Committee was fully within its rights to strip all 368 delegates from the two states when they scheduled primaries in January.
The analysis also said there is an option to restore 100 percent of the delegates - by a recommendation of the Credentials Committee that meets later this summer. However, that would mean a final decision would not be made until the first day of the convention in Denver since Credentials Committee decisions have to be approved by the full convention as it convenes — risking a floor fight.
In other words, according to the legal analysis of the DNC lawyers, the Rules and By-Laws Committe does NOT HAVE the legal authority to do anything more than restore half of the delegates.
Can 100% of the delegates be seated? Yes, but ONLY if it's taking to the floor of the convention, period.
What this does NOT solve is how the delegations would be seated - what proportion allocated to Hillary vs. Obama.
But it does provide legal guidance to the members of the Rules and By-Laws Committee that it simply cannot restore 100% of the delegates to both states on its own.
It comes down to this then:
- Can the split be allocated according to a compromise acceptable to everyone
- Will Hillary Clinton take this to the floor of the Convention, because that's all it comes down to now.
My answer to question two is: probably not. Even with FL/MI she'd never get enough delegates. Her goal was always to claim a moral victory of this magical "popular vote" lead in order to sway Super Delegates - and more likely make it seem as if the election were stolen from her. With even half the delegates seated, she can still claim that the "popular votes" counted to make this claim.
By the way, I'd like to repeat, as I always do now, that there is no such metric as the popular vote. If it were a relevant factor at all, there would be no such thing as a caucus state. Just sayin...
More to come - I'll update with reactions if/when they come out. Stay tuned!