Solomon’s Baby

What I’m about to write will probably get me bounced from local politics. But here goes–my suggestion for how you resolve the impasse over the MI delegates.

This is the current apportionment for the MI delegation:

Congressional District	Clinton Delegates	Clinton Alternates	Uncommitted Delegates	Uncommitted Alternates
1	2F, 1M	1M	1F, 1M	0
2	1F, 2M	1F	1F, 1M	0
3	2F, 1M	1M	1F, 1M	0
4	1F, 2M	1F	1F, 1M	0
5	2F, 2M	1M	1F, 1M	0
6	2F, 1M	1F	1F, 1M	0
7	1F, 2M	1M	1F, 1M	0
8	2F, 2M	1F	1F, 1M	0
9	1F, 2M	1M	2F, 1M	0
10	2F, 1M	1F	1F, 1M	0
11	1F, 2M	1M	1F, 1M	0
12	1F, 2M	1F	2F, 1M	0
13	2F, 1M	0	1F, 2M	1M
14	2F, 1M	0	2F, 2M	1F
15	1F, 2M	1M	2F, 1M	0
Subtotal	47: 23F, 24M	13: 6F, 7M	36: 19F, 17M	2: 1F, 1M
PLEO	10	0	7	0
At-Large	16	2F, 1M	12	1F, 2M
Total	73	16	55	5

The 47 Hillary delegates and the 36 uncommitted delegates were chosen on Saturday. Obama picked up most–but not all–of the uncommitted delegates (my estimate is that he got about 31 of the 36, with the others primarily going to union members who originally supported Edwards).

The PLEOs and the At-Large delegates have not been selected yet.

In addition, MI has 28 super-delegates (26 named and 2 add-ons), though there is a chance that Kwame Kilpatrick will no longer be a super-delegate by the time August rolls around.

My proposal is this: you seat the delegates selected on Saturday with full voting strength. That would net Hillary 11-16 delegates from having won the Clusterfuck in January.

You treat the PLEOs as is. This would net Hillary another 3 delegates from the Clusterfuck.

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.

This solution accomplishes everything everyone has said they want to do. 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. It rewards Hillary, slightly, for having won the Clusterfuck. It penalizes Obama, slightly, for taking his name off the ballot in January. 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 got their ability to cast a vote in a truly fair election. It penalizes the super-delegates, many of whom were instrumental in the decision to defy the DNC.

This is a way to avoid disenfranchising the voters of MI and to maintain the authority of the DNC. It asks each candidate to sacrifice so that we can resolve this seemingly intractable problem and turn our attention to beating John McCain.

Full disclosure: I voted "uncommitted" in January, not because I preferred any of the three major candidates at that point, but because I thought endorsing the Clusterfuck in any way would be wrong. I finally decided to support Obama after Hillary’s people started posturing about the MI Clusterfuck; those actions badly exacerbated the already raw feelings in MI and I found them totally irresponsible and selfish. And for the same reasons, after Terry McAuliffe got on teevee on Tuesday and claimed that Hillary had "won" Michigan and that proved she could "win" the important states in November, I sent $100 to Obama.