Saturday, April 19, 2008

Chris Bowers over at Open Left thinks that Michigan and Florida may be seated at the Democratic convention after all. He lays out the following explanation:
  1. Florida and Michigan will have a delegation seated at the convention. Everyone knows this. Howard Dean has said this. As such, pretending that 2,024 is the magic number doesn't make any sense. With Florida and Michigan included, the magic number is 2,208.
  2. The Florida Democratic Party will send a delegation with a pledged delegate breakdown of Clinton 105, Obama 67, and Edwards 13 to the credentials committee. This is already a done deal. The Obama campaign has not offered an alternative delegate slate.
  3. The Michigan Democratic Party will send a delegation with a pledged delegate breakdown of Clinton 73, Obama 55 to the credentials committee. Not only has the Obama campaign not offered up an alternative slate, it is working to cement the 73-55 delegation
Bowers says that, based on his calculations, Obama will still have a 73-pledged delegate advantage with this seating plan.
Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left wonders, though, if this theory is true, why the Obama campaign isn't more openly talking about admitting Florida and Michigan to the convention.
Some are wondering if the Obama folks are trying to push Clinton out of the race before making any deals about seating the FL and MI convention delegates: that way, it won't really matter whom the delegates support. Bowers says that that 73-delegate margin will be enough of a buffer for Obama unless his campaign is in "freefall" anyway, but, looking at Slate's Delegate Calculator, you can come up with a few (at least remotely plausible scenarios) in which Clinton could significantly eat into that lead in the upcoming primaries.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

A series of immigration raids on poultry plants in five states.