Michigan offered up a plan for seating its delegates:
Under that proposal -- hammered out weeks ago by Sen. Carl Levin, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and National Committeewoman Debbie Dingell -- Sen. Hillary Clinton would get 69 of the state's delegates and Sen. Barack Obama, 59.
The compromise would cut only slightly into Obama's lead. The Illinois senator has 1,846.5 delegates to Clinton's 1,696, according to the Associated Press.
The proposal also would seat the state's 29 superdelegates.
The proposal essentially splits the difference between the 73 delegates Clinton won under state party rules in the disallowed primary -- Obama had taken his name off the ballot -- and an Obama proposal to award each candidate half the delegates.
State Party Chairman Mark Brewer said he was directed during a conference call with the state party's 80-member executive committee Wednesday night to bring the plan as a challenge to the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws panel when it meets May 31 in Washington.
Brewer said support for the compromise was sizable.
Among those supporting the plan:
DNC member Joel Ferguson, a co-chairman of Clinton's Michigan campaign who said he could support the 69-59 plan.
"While we compromised on how many delegates we get, we still recognize the plurality of the election," Ferguson said, noting that proposal lets Clinton keep a 10-delegate lead in light of her primary victory.
Ferguson said Thursday that he would withdraw a plan he and DNC member Jon Ausman of Florida -- both superdelegates -- submitted to the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee. Their plan would have allocated the delegates based on the primary election results, but given each just half a vote. The superdelegates would have had full voting rights.
There's no way the plan would have been brought before the state central committee without the support of Governor Jennifer Granholm, a Clinton supporter. There's no way that Granholm and Ferguson would have supported the plan unless they had been told by the Clinton campaign that it was OK to move forward with the proposal. So that means that Hillary Clinton accepts the plan, right?
Wrong:
On Wednesday, Clinton called again for Michigan's votes to be counted -- mentioning it at an appearance in West Virginia, which holds its primary Tuesday, and, according to her staff, greeting protesters outside the DNC who were demanding the state's delegates be seated.
On Tuesday night, speaking in Indianapolis, she said: "I am running to be the president of all of America -- north, south, east and west, and everywhere in between. That's why it is so important that we count the votes of Florida and Michigan."
This means that we now have Clinton supporters who will either have to argue against the Clinton campaign at the Rules and Bylaws Committee, or they will have to retract their support for the proposal. It's an awful place for a candidate to put her supporters.
This may have have been caused by a screw-up within the Clinton campaign, where some staff/leadership spoke with the Michigan supporters and expressed the acceptance of the compromise plan, but others within the campaign either didn't know about the plan or are sticking a shiv in others within the campaign, and in the process hurting Granholm, Ferguson et al. Or maybe Clinton simply changed her mind, in which case the F.U. to Granholm and the Clinton supporters in Michigan is even worse.
It's been obvious for 2 months that Clinton's only chance to become the nominee was to hang around and hope Obama blew up. That's not going to happen, so now the only question is how the loser loses. Screwing over your steadfast supporters in a key state isn't a good sign that she will be acknowledging her loss gracefully or quickly, and is evidence that Clinton's continued candidacy can still delay the movement toward unity and hurt our chances in November.
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