The wisdom of Solomon -- aka Lanny Davis

Obie1948

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Monday May 26, 2008 · 2:14 PM PDT

2008/05/26 · 14:14

Lanny Davis is a well known surrogate for Hillary. He regularly appeared on the defunct MSNBC Tucker Carlson show and elsewhere. Today, he published an article at Politico.com suggesting a "fairest" solution to the problems of the Michigan and Florida delegations based on "neutral principles" and a "Solomonic compromise". Davis proposal

Excuse me, but I'm choking up over the overwhelming "fairness" of this proposal.

The biggest delegate hauls for Mrs. Clinton to date were her home state of New York (plus 46), California (plus 38), and Kentucky (plus 23). Compare these numbers with the "Solomonic" solution of Mr. Davis.

According to his "fairness" barometer, Mrs. Clinton should receive plus 74 in Michigan (let me repeat that for emphasis, PLUS 74) and plus 36 in Florida. These two unprimary states would suddenly provide Mrs. Clinton with more pledged delegates (plus 109) than her THREE best states (combined plus 107) to date.

In Michigan, Clinton received 55 percent of the vote. According to Thegreenpapers.com, she thus should receive 73 pledged delegates based on that percentage ... one Solomonic compromise, more generous to Obama than to Clinton, would be to divide the remaining delegates approximately 50-50 between the two of them, 28-27

Sounds fair to me especially since Mr. Obama broke the rules, according to Mr. Davis, (along with most other candidates except Mrs. Clinton) by removing his name from the Michigan ballot.

One little known fact: Clinton complied with party rules by allowing her name to remain on the ballot, as did Dodd and Kucinich. Obama was not forced by party rules to remove his name — he chose to do so.

Of course, even after this "fair" and "Solomonic" allocation of delegates, Mrs. Clinton will still lose the pledged delegate count by a wide margin.

The galling cheekiness of his proposal is stunning, but it so epitomizes the far-fetched arguments of the Clinton campaign. Twist it anyway you can to benefit Hillary, and then call it the "fairest", based on "neutral principles", and exhibiting "Solomonic" wisdom.

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