Ambinder has a post looking at the grim odds Hillary has in getting the delegates from the Michigan and Florida 1.0 primaries. Dean appoints 25 members, and 161 members of the credential committee — the body that will decide whether to seat those delegates — are appointed proportionally. He runs the math:
Let’s say that ALL 25 of Howard Dean’s appointees vote AGAINST seating Florida and Michigan. Let’s say that 80 additional members are appointed by Obama and 81 by Clinton. 25 + 80 is more than 81. You can fiddle with the numbers and get to a scenario that might seat the Florida delegates. But it’s safe to safe to say that the credential committee option for Sen. Clinton to get Michigan and Florida seated would require her to have won more delegates than she will win.
So, it’s looking more and more like we’ll have “do-over” caucus contests in Michigan and Florida, a compromise that manages to combine the undemocratic format of caucuses with the permissiveness of bad parents who make rules only to allow their children to break them. The “mommy party,” indeed. (Will Dean go down as the worst DNC chair in modern history? Is it possible that he’s done more damage to the party, long-term, than any intra-party mudslinging between the candidates? Discuss.)
The one “fair” thing about this solution is that it undercuts the time that Hillary has spent in those states with Obama’s superior skills in winning caucuses. But that’s an accident, not an equal chance.
UPDATE: It’s true that discussion right now are about whether Florida will hold another primary, an option being pushed by Hillary supporters, which would of course eliminate Obama’s organizing advantage.
More after the jump
But primaries are a great deal more expensive than caucuses — redoing Florida could cost as much as $25M — I can’t imagine that they’ll be able swing them in either state. Michigan is proposing a “firehouse primary,” which is a term, I admit, I’d never heard before. One definition online explained it this way:
In a firehouse primary, a limited number of voting locations are chosen within a legislative district and ballots are cast on one day within a set amount of time, usually shorter than a regularly scheduled election. The party that chooses a firehouse primary is also responsible for organizing, staffing and monitoring such an election.
That seems like a recipe for rigging to me… Where you put the polling places, how you set the hours — couldn’t that easily tip the scales toward a particular set of voters? Or away from them, if it was in your interest to suppress turnout in a precinct? Not that normal primaries are immune to that, but selecting polling places from an existing set would add another layer of options to be manipulated.