Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Seattle lawyer David McDonald is in Washington, D.C., this weekend for a meeting of the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee -- an event that might normally elicit yawns, but in this unusual presidential campaign year is the focus of intense attention.
It is expected to draw hundreds of protesters to the hotel where the meeting will take place Saturday (and possibly Sunday).
The reason for the buzz is that the committee represents one of the very last ditches in Hillary Clinton's last-ditch effort to overtake Barack Obama in their fight for the Democratic presidential nomination as she attempts to seat the rogue delegations from primaries held in Michigan and Florida.
Obama holds an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates selected by party-approved primaries and caucuses. He's also ahead among the superdelegates -- the elected officials and party leaders automatically seated at the August national convention in Denver -- who hold the balance of power at the convention (though enough superdelegates remain uncommitted that he hasn't yet nailed down the overall delegate majority needed for nomination).
But the key is "party-approved": Michigan and Florida defied DNC rules and held primaries in January, before they were authorized to do so. As a result, the states have been stripped of their national convention delegates: 211 from Florida and 156 from Michigan.
Clinton and Obama agreed with that penalty early in the year, neither campaigned in either state, and Obama removed his name from the Michigan ballot (Clinton's name stayed).
But Clinton, who was the top vote-getter in both states, is pushing for the party to honor the primary results retroactively, which would give her a huge boost toward closing the delegate gap.
She can't significantly close the gap in the three primaries left on the schedule (Puerto Rico on Sunday, and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday).
It will be up to the 30 members of the Rules Committee to decide what to do about Michigan and Florida.
The committee could do nothing and leave the zero-delegate penalties in place, but that risks alienating millions of Democratic voters in two key states in the November election -- and McDonald said in an interview that outcome is improbable. But McDonald said he is unlikely to favor the opposite extreme: validating the nonconforming primaries.
"The integrity of the rules has got to be maintained," he said. "I have difficulty just saying, 'Never mind.' "
Still, once it became apparent in the spring that the national party wouldn't simply roll over and accept the primary results, state party officials in Michigan and Florida made some effort to come into compliance with party rules, McDonald said.
Those attempts failed, in part, because of interference from the candidates' campaigns. McDonald said he does not begrudge the candidates for that, but said he'd like to give the offending states some credit for making the effort. The tricky part is how to do that.
Various proposals have surfaced to draw on the primary results, but to dilute the strength of the states' delegations -- although McDonald isn't comfortable with the idea of using an out-of-bounds primary in the calculation.
"Our rules say it's a nonevent, so to use it for some purpose is a stretch," he said.
McDonald also is wary of allowing the states even 50 percent representation at the convention, no matter how the delegation is selected. He fears that wouldn't be enough of a punishment to dissuade big, delegate-rich states from defying the DNC schedule in 2012 and holding early primaries in the expectation that, even at half strength, they would attract candidates and media attention in a way that zero-delegate primaries demonstrably did not.
The committee can devise some other means for selecting delegates from Michigan and Florida, McDonald said.
And once that's done, he said, he'll declare his support for Clinton or Obama. A DNC member and uncommitted superdelegate, McDonald has stayed publicly neutral to avoid compromising his position on the rules committee.
Six Washington superdelegates support Clinton, seven have endorsed Obama and four -- including McDonald -- remain uncommitted.
Barack Obama
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