Michigan Democrats have submitted the plan they would like the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee to approve at their May 31st Meeting. While Senator Clinton has asked that the delegates be seated according to January's primary results (73-55), Senator Obama has proposed allocating them evenly (64-64) since he wasn't on the ballot. This plan would essentially split the difference.

Michigan Democratic leaders on Wednesday settled on a plan to give presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton 69 delegates and Barack Obama 59 as a way to get the state's delegates seated at the national convention. [...]

The state party's executive committee voted Wednesday to ask the national party's Rules and Bylaws Committee to approve the 69-59 delegate split when it meets May 31. The plan would allow the state's 157 delegates and superdelegates to be seated at the convention.

While the plan would give Hillary Clinton just a 10-pledged delegate advantage, the real key to Clinton's approval of the plan could be the superdelegates, of which Michigan has 29. As of now, among those that have declared, Clinton has a lead, although Obama may have some of those undeclared supers in his pocket, especially after Tuesday. Which could be why ultimately Obama would approve the plan as well. Of course, a couple other reasons Clinton should like the plan are that it officially raises the delegate threshold the candidates need to win AND it arguably legitimizes Michigan's popular vote. But if the Obama campaign does approve this plan, it would be a sure sign of their confidence that even with Michigan (and Florida) Hillary Clinton would not be able to catch up.

Update [2008-5-8 15:39:55 by Todd Beeton]:Yes, Hillary Clinton has rejected the Michigan compromise but I agree with Bowers that it essentially represents the best result she can hope for. Which in itself isn't all that good.

[I]t is extremely unlikely that Clinton will get a better deal than this on Michigan. When it or something similar does pass, Florida will become irrelevant... Even with Florida seated as is, Clinton trails by 95 delegates when the Michigan Party's plan is enacted. Further, since Edwards has declined to make an endorsement, his 32 delegates are now effectively uncommitted superdelegates. So, this means that the best case-scenario for Clinton right now is that she trails by 95 delegates with 550.5 delegates remaining. So, even in Clitnon's best case scenario, Obama only needs 228 of the remaining 550.5 delegates, or 41.4%, to win the nomination.

CNN has the story:

Michigan's Democrats have released another new proposal yesterday in their quest to ensure their state will be represented at this summer's Democratic National Convention.

Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Sen. Carl Levin, Democratic National Committee Member Debbie Dingell and United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger - the working group that has been meeting to try to end the impasse -- sent a letter to state party chair Mark Brewer Tuesday in which they urged the Democratic National Committee to seat the Michigan delegation under a formula that would give a 10-delegate edge to Hillary Clinton.

Clinton was the only major candidate to appear on the ballot in the state's January contest, which she won with 55 percent of the vote. No delegates were awarded because of national party penalties on Michigan Democrats for moving up their primary date. Forty percent of January's primary voters chose the "uncommitted" option on the ballot; a majority of those "uncommitted" delegates are backing Barack Obama.

Clinton's campaign has said that the results of the January vote - which would give her an 18-delegate edge, 73-55 - should count. Obama's campaign had said the delegates should be split evenly, 64-64.

This proposal, which splits the difference between what the Clinton campaign is calling for and what the Obama campaign is calling for (actually falling slightly closer to the Clinton position and, what's more, opening the door for Clinton to net even more delegates out of the state through superdelegate endorsements, which she leads in the state by a seven to one margin), seems like a fairly reasonable compromise. On one hand, the proposal would allow for voters' sentiments to have a say despite the fact that their political leaders made the unwise (in retrospect) decision of playing chicken with the Democratic National Committee, and on the other hand it would ensure that Barack Obama is not unduly hampered by having followed the rules and refusing to campaign in the state.

Now it's not clear that either campaign will accept this deal. For the Obama campaign, this would not be optimal because it would enable Clinton to gain delegates (perhaps netting as many as 16 or more) despite the fact that Obama himself did not wage a campaign in the state and, what's more, his name was not even on the ballot. For the Clinton campaign, this deal would lead to giving up eight pledged delegates and, perhaps more importantly, concede some of the uncertainty upon which the campaign is enduring. (With Michigan and Florida resolved, it becomes increasingly clear that the math is difficult, shall we say, for the former First Lady.) Moreover, it's not even clear that this would be the best possible compromise.

But it is a proposed compromise, one in which everyone would be giving up something they want -- but one in which a tricky situation for the party would be resolved. It might not be the best solution possible, but it may be one of the better ones at this point. And the question now must be asked, for all parties involved, as to whether they care more about scoring political points or about resolving this issue.

As a Michigander herself, Firedoglake's emptywheel has a rather novel proposal to resolve the Michigan delegate standoff in about as fair a way as I've ever seen proposed. Now, it should be noted before getting to the meat of the proposal, what emptywheel's real concern here is. For most of us talking about this primary, we talk about the Michigan and Florida delegate situation in sort of abstract terms as something whose impact is almost exclusively a matter of delegate math vis a vis the primary election. emptywheel sees something much graver at stake.

More and more, I see volunteers who have been critical to our GOTV success in recent years tuning out of the party, utterly disgusted by the state and national politicians posturing about our vote.

And so in the wake of the April 19th Michigan congressional district conventions at which many of the delegates to the national convention were elected, emptywheel proposes the following:

My proposal is this: you seat the 83 delegates selected (plus alternates) on April 19 with full voting strength. That would net Hillary 11-16 delegates from having won the Clusterfuck in January. It would also ensure that the only reasonably democratic vote Michiganders got to cast this year--April 19's district caucuses--counts.

You treat the PLEOs (spots for locally elected officials) as is. This would net Hillary another 3 delegate advantage from the primary.

You split the At-Large delegates 50-50 (that is, 14 each). This would give Obama the opportunity to influence the selection of 14 of the delegates in Denver (his campaign did not vet any of the people who ran as uncommitted delegates on Saturday and at least some of the delegates selected are not solid Obama supporters).[...]

You do not seat the super-delegates, at least not as super-delegates. The campaigns are perfectly free to use their 14 At-Large delegate slots to give to the people who would otherwise be super-delegates, but they will be delegates just like any other.

Of course, this will not be terribly popular with partisans of either side for whom any movement away from their candidate's position is unacceptable, but if you accept the premise that the only solution will be a compromise solution, this looks to be a pretty damn good one. As emptywheel points out, it actually does accomplish most of the goals that all parties involved have said they want.

It rewards Hillary, slightly, for having won the Clusterfuck. It penalizes Obama, slightly, for taking his name off the ballot in January...[but] it would also partially incorporate Obama's demand that the delegation be split 50-50...And it penalizes MI, 28 total delegates, for having broken DNC rules and moved its primary up.

But it focuses that punishment on those who played Chicken with the votes of MI and lost, last year, rather than punishing those who had no choice in the matter and lost their ability to cast a vote in a truly fair election. It penalizes the super-delegates.

But for emptywheel, most important of all:

It would give MI's voters--the people who will do the grunt work to get our Democratic nominee elected in the fall--a say at the Convention.

So what do you think? If you like it, go sign emptywheel's petition asking Howard Dean and Mark Brewer, Chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, to adopt it.

I grew up in a little suburb in Michigan. Wedged between Detroit and Ann Arbor, Plymouth was and is still an enclave of wealthy, mostly white Americans, but this was contrasted by the remarkable diversity of African-Americans, Indians (the ones from Asia), and Muslim immigrants. At the age of 17, I moved out of my parents house and started my higher education at a private college in a major urban center in Florida.

When the DNC made its declaration that the delegates of Florida and Michigan would not be seated, I balked. I think most people balked; there was no conceivable way that a Democrat could take the White House without at least being competitive in these two states, and there is no better way to shoot yourself in the foot than to alienate voters. I laughed at the fact that the Democratic Party managed to slight the only two states I had ever lived in, and thusly, slighted almost every person that I've met in my lifetime. I thought that the American Democratic Party, of all the political parties in the world, would be the least likely to surrender the voting rights of its members over political moves made between bloated party bigwigs, and over a process that punishes the only people who had no say in it: the voters.

But I guess that was before the era of Barack Obama.

Is Jimmy Carter Letting Democratic Voters Down??
Posted on April 15, 2008 by GRL

On Monday (April 14) I caught a brief comment by Jimmy Carter about the Nepal elections on the BBC World Service. Carter, who was in Nepal to monitor the polling, said that whatever problems occurred had "paled" compared to the overall success of the vote. (Unfortunately, the audio report is no longer available.)

In a report issued on April 15 entitled Trip Report by Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to Nepal: April 6-14, 2008, Carter wrote in great detail about all the efforts made to ensure a free and fair election.

   <We have maintained a staff of long-term election observers for more than fifteen months. They have visited all 75 districts and had an opportunity to become familiar with the entire nation and its various and conflicting political factions.</p>

   After our arrival from Atlanta, we joined Dr. John Hardman and began receiving extensive briefings from former U.S Ambassador Peter Burleigh, David Pottie, Darren Nance, Sarah Levit-Shore, and others. Most of our 60 international observers, from 21 nations, had been deployed to the more remote areas by helicopter, all-terrain vehicles, and by foot. My co-chairman was Dr. Surakiart Sathirathai, former deputy prime minister of Thailand, who was a key partner and essential to the mission's success. Our team was joined by international observers from the European Union, Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL), and by several thousand domestic observers. ...

   On election day we visited as many polling sites as possible in the valley that surrounds Kathmandu and found the election commission's procedures were being largely followed. There were long and separate lines of men and women in a celebratory mood, the total turnout being above 60 percent. Despite some problems, our observers throughout the nation found the same situation among a total of 400 sites visited. Ballot boxes were required to be delivered to 75 central locations for counting, and we observed a number of these procedures.>

Impressive, no?

   I'm sorry Clintonites, I really am, but the true position of Hillary Rodham Clinton's on the MI problem has come out and, to torture a simple phrase, It ain't good!!

   The MI and FL questions are difficult ones to answer, not b/c of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, not b/c of the DNC, but but b/c of the arrogance of the state party officials. It's too bad really, b/c I initially agreed with them, that the DNC idolizing NH and IA was ridiculous. That said, the rules were set and agreed to, hence they must be followed. FL and MI knew that, and thumbed their noses at the DNC anyway. They deserve their punishment....which now leads us to what that punishment will be.

Just in via email, the Clinton campaign responds to the Obama campaign floating the possibility of seating all of the delegates out of Michigan, but with a 50/50 split. Here's campaign spokesman Phil Singer:

When it comes to counting votes, the Obama campaign seems content to only count the ones that it got.  Senator Obama voluntarily removed his name from the Michigan ballot and wants a backroom deal that ignores the nearly 600,000 Americans who voted in Michigan.  Instead of distorting Senator Clinton's words, the Obama campaign ought to honor the votes in Michigan and Florida, respect the bedrock principles of our democracy and stop giving the Republicans an issue to use against Democrats in the fall.

This response from the Clinton campaign isn't terribly surprising. By accepting a 50/50 split of pledged delegates out of Michigan and Florida, Hillary Clinton could have actually netted an overall increase of delegates to the convention, as superdelegates would have likely been seated along with the pledged delegates (and more Michigan superdelegates support Clinton than Barack Obama). However, such a move by the Clinton campaign might have been viewed as a crass departure from the campaign's calls to have the state's delegates reflect the sentiments of the voters in the state (whether from the January primary or another subsequent contest). As a result, there was little likelihood that the campaign was going to accept the proposal floated by the Obama campaign even if they had had some interest in doing so (and it's not clear to me at all that they had such an interest in the first place).

So the situation still seems to be very much up in the air. I'm assuming that some sort of solution is going to occur -- though such an assumption might be like those that held that the nomination process was going to wrap itself up a month or two ago. As such, it remains to be seen just what's going to happen.

In via email from the Obama campaign:

"Senator Obama firmly believes that the Michigan delegation should be seated in Denver. A 50/50 split of the delegates is an eminently fair solution, especially since originally Senator Clinton herself said the Michigan primary wouldn't 'count for anything.' It's now up to the Clinton campaign: they can agree to a fair resolution or they can continue trying to score political points and change the rules.  It's time to move forward. Senator Clinton should accept an equitable solution that allows Michigan to participate fully in the convention," said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.

Here's the Clinton campaign's Phil Singer, in an email that preceded the Plouffe email:

"The issues and voters of Michigan are too important to be dismissed. Close to 600,000 Michiganians cast ballots in January and these votes cannot be ignored. We urge the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee to take all necessary steps to ensure the voices of the people of Michigan are heard and its delegates are seated at the Democratic convention this summer. Already, over 100,000 people have signed our petition calling on the DNC to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida. We urge Senator Obama to join our efforts to ensure that the votes of the people of Michigan and Florida are counted."

To my recollection, this is the first time that the Obama campaign has specifically called for Michigan delegates to be seated at the national convention in a particular manner.

It is yet unclear as to whether this would be a palatable solution for the Clinton campaign and its surrogates in Michigan (especially now that a re-vote in the state has been shot down, seemingly for the last time). Indeed, given that Hillary Clinton won the vote in January (albeit without either Barack Obama or John Edwards on the ballot) and would have likely been able to win more pledged delegates out of the state than Obama had there been a re-vote, it's quite possible that a 50-50 split would not be acceptable to the campaign. Then again, given that the Clinton campaign would still likely get more total delegates out of both Michigan and Florida in the case of a 50-50 split of pledged delegates -- she is favored by the superdelegates in the two states that have already announced their positions (superdelegates that would not be seated if the states' entire delegations were not seated in August) -- perhaps it is a compromise the Clinton campaign would be willing to live with.