And to see that the Clinton Team is no-less breathtaking in it's decptions, untruths and distractions here than it has been throughout the campaign.
But here's the summary:
Now, everyone knows that there were 55 uncommitted delegates in Michigan. But what few seem to realize is that on April 19 in Michigan, the district conventions were held and Obama claimed 31 of the 36 uncommitted district-level delegates. He already has them. Here, look at the comments in this Bowers Open Left diary back from April 20th to get specific names. Or this diary. It's slightly painstaking, (here are 27 names, here are 3 more, here's where emptywheel cites 31) but they clearly exist. Plus the 67 Florida Obama delegates mean that there are 98 living, breathing pledged Obama delegates from those two states.
There is no such thing as a scenario where Obama gets 0 delegates in Michigan (and DCW should really do away with Scenario 5 because it is no longer operative). Chris Bowers has been writing about this for a long time.
Did anybody notice Harold Ickes arguing Thursday that Obama really should get 0 delegates in Michigan and that all the uncommitted delegates should go to the convention uncommitted?
[very detailed review of many many delegate count scenarios]
31 in Michigan right now. That's worst case. That's why Ickes made that little-noticed, jaw-dropping argument yesterday. You have to be really familiar with the math to appreciate why this staggeringly hypocritical ass did it. Not only did Ickes vote to strip Michigan of its delegates originally back in August and now is screaming at the top of his voice that it's outrageous that Michigan has been stripped, now he wants Michigan to let Clinton keep her 73 delegates but strip Obama of the 31 he got at the district level.
(Get that? Let that sink in. Is there any question that the Clintons are literally the opposite of leadership?)
[Rachel] Maddow is dead-on that the Clinton goal for the May 31 meeting is merely to come out with some result that is being kicked down the road in appeals. But Ickes knows that Obama can surely see the mathematical inevitability in what I just explained, that Obama can call the big bluff by agreeing to Michigan and Florida in full, and then what will the Clintons claim in outrage? The fog they're thriving off of disappears. So Ickes is trying to pre-empt Obama's pre-emption by laying groundwork for further fog - that Obama agreeing to seat the delegations in full is too favorable to Obama because he got 31 and deserves 0. Ickes knows that nobody besides a few bloggers really knows that Obama already has 31, so he's hoping to get in front of the dawning awareness. (It hasn't been in Obama's interest to claim that number until as late in the process as possible, either.)
But the 31 exist, and the math is inexorable. While Obama would need 135 delegates after agreeing to seat Michigan and Florida in full, as-is, 44 are in a group of 100% guaranteed, 67 are in a group of 85-99% guaranteed, and 205 are the rest. Obama has been winning "the rest" by a huge ratio for a loooong time now, and many of us personally know people in that latter group who are just waiting for the primaries to officially end to declare. The closer Obama comes to 24-37 supers in the next week, the more likely I believe he is to agree to full seating.
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