DNC Meeting

obama is campaigning in south dakota today and hillary is drinking pina coladas in puerto rico and the dnc is trying to come up with a resolution.
for live blogging, i'll send you here. i can't stand to hear all the pretend caring about florida voters.
live streaming here.
the rules and bylaws committee (rbc) members met last night before this mornings meeting and agreed that the party would come together.

Obama on Making an Impact This DNC Weekend

from the obama campaign:
On Saturday, the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee will meet in Washington D.C. to determine whether Florida and Michigan delegates should be allowed to participate at the Democratic convention in August. We look forward to the meeting proceeding smoothly—and we're asking that our supporters not demonstrate or disrupt the proceedings in any way.
Instead, we're urging supporters from across the region to make a positive impact this weekend by helping out with voter registration and organizational events taking place on Saturday.
Here are just a few of the many going on in Virginia this weekend:
In Arlington, supporters will meet at the Court House Metro Stop at 10:00 AM on Saturday morning before heading out to register voters throughout the area
Also in Arlington, Spanish speaking volunteers will be manning a nonpartisan voter registration table at the Arlington Mill Community Center, before heading out to register voters at shopping centers, grocery stores, and other high traffic areas in the neighborhood
In Clifton, volunteers will be going door-to-door talk to unregistered voters
In Alexandria, Gloria will be hosting an "Obama Mamas" Women For Obama House Party
In Norfolk, supporters will be canvassing to register new voters and to recruit new volunteers
In Manassass, supporters will be registering new voters throughout Prince William County
In Petersburg, volunteers will be meeting at the public library before heading out to register voters
And in Richmond, Kristen is organizing a series of voter registration events as part of an ambitious, ongoing effort to register 4,000 new voters, with staging locations at:
Chimborazo Park
Broad Rock Sports Complex
Battery Park Pool
Randolf Pool
There are dozens of grassroots events like these taking place across the country this weekend, and there will be many more in the weeks and months to come. You can search for an event in your own community, or sign up and create your own.
As the attention begins to turn towards the general election, there is no better way to make an impact than by registering new voters and bringing more people into this movement. No matter where you are this weekend, you can connect with people in your own community and continue the work of building a true grassroots political machine, one new voter at a time.

How Hillary Conveniently Shifted Her Delegate Strategy

first, michigan didn't matter, she said. by january, when she was losing, michigan mattered and suddenly, so did all the people, who deserve their votes to be counted!

Obama Camp Advises Supporters Not to Protest DNC

that's a good sign.
obama supporters were going to counter the hillaries who will be arriving by bus to do their thing. but the obama camp says no protests needed.

Hillary's Mad Dash

hillary's popular vote argument is positively bogus. she's pretending to be a hero for women, acting like she cares about florida and michigan voters, when earlier in the race, when she thought she was THE ONE, she didn't care. why can't people see this? she knows better.
she's adding in florida and michigan votes but both parties--obama and hillary-- agreed not to campaign in those states, so how can they possibly be counted? obama might have even won in michigan.
obama's name wasn't on the ballot in michigan, so she doesn't have anything but a dream. i can't believe she thinks otherwise.
i can't believe that anyone is entertaining her. the clintons may not be in office but they rule the roost. they still have so much control over the democratic party. they need to be shut down.
hillary has no chance of winning but once again, she's exploiting her supporters who think she does.
she's serving no purpose, not even her career.
newsweek goes further in the explanation of why her argument is bogus:

But Clinton has continued with one claim that could have a pernicious effect on the Democrats' chances in November. While she knows that the nomination is determined by delegates, Hillary insists on saying at every opportunity that she is winning the popular vote. And she has now taken to touting the new HBO movie "Recount," which chronicles the Florida fiasco of eight years ago. Everyone can agree that the primary calendar needs reform. But popular-vote pandering is poison for Democrats. For a party scarred by the experience of 2000, when Al Gore received 500,000 more popular votes than George W. Bush but lost the presidency, this argument is sure to make it harder to unite and put bitter feelings aside.

Oh, and it's not true.

Let me go through the numbers without making your head spin.

After Kentucky and Oregon, Obama has an official popular vote lead of 449,486.

This does not include Iowa (where Obama first broke from the pack), Nevada (where Hillary won the popular vote narrowly), Maine (where Obama won easily) or Washington state (another strong Obama state). Why? Because these caucus states don't officially report their popular votes. But if we're going to truly count all the votes, official and nonofficial, as Hillary advocates, you can't very well not include caucus states.

Adding in the unofficial tally from caucus states, as estimated by realclearpolitics.com based on official caucus turnout and the number of local delegates selected at the precinct level, that gives Obama a lead of 559,708.

Now we come to Florida and Michigan, whose popular votes Hillary says should be counted. The argument for counting them is no better than for counting the caucus states (and maybe worse, considering that these states violated party rules by moving their primaries up on the calendar, and no one campaigned there). But for the sake of argument let's count 'em. That gives Hillary a lead of 63,373.

HILLARY WINS POPULAR VOTE!

Not so fast. If the Democratic National Committee completes its expected settlement on May 31, Florida and Michigan will each get half of their votes counted. Translated to popular votes, that would subtract about 325,000 votes from Hillary, putting Obama back into the lead.

Obama's Name Didn't Appear

on the michigan ballot and obama barely campaigned in florida but hillary has her angry face on and is not letting up. that's just nasty, completely unfair. the obama camp, which has always contended that those two states delegates would be seated, says it's willing to compromise with hillary. but that probably won't be enough for her. she's awfully ungracious.

cnn: Obama senior adviser David Axelrod says the Illinois senator’s campaign is “open to compromise” and willing to cede Hillary Clinton the advantage in talks over the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegations at the Democratic National Convention this summer.

"We are willing to go more than half way. We're willing to work to make sure that we can achieve a compromise," Axelrod tells National Public Radio’s Michele Norris in a Wednesday evening interview. "And I guess the question is: is Senator Clinton's campaign willing to do the same?"

Clinton spent Wednesday in Florida highlighting her push for full delegations from both states to be seated in accordance with their January votes, which were not sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee because of the early primary dates. Her campaign has charged the Obama team with blocking a compromise on the issue – a claim that campaign has denied.

Obama's Dignity Politics

Wildly Creative Scenarios From You Know Who

from obama's campaign adviser david pfouffe to democratic national committee:

There are only six contests remaining in the Democratic primary calendar and only 217 pledged delegates left to be awarded. Only 7 percent of the pledged delegates remain on the table. There are 260 remaining undeclared superdelegates, for a total of 477 delegates left to be awarded.

With North Carolina and Indiana complete, Barack Obama only needs 172 total delegates to capture the Democratic nomination. This is only 36% of the total remaining delegates.

Conversely, Senator Clinton needs 326 delegates to reach the Democratic nomination, which represents a startling 68% of the remaining delegates.
With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days. While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or its millions of supporters, volunteers, and donors.

We believe it is exceedingly unlikely Senator Clinton will overtake our lead in the popular vote and in fact lost ground on that measure last night. However, the popular vote is a deeply flawed and illegitimate metric for deciding the nominee – since each campaign based their strategy on the acquisition of delegates. More importantly, the rules of the nomination are predicated on delegates, not popular vote.

Just as the Presidential election in November will be decided by the electoral college, not popular vote, the Democratic nomination is decided by delegates.

If we believed the popular vote was somehow the key measurement, we would have campaigned much more intensively in our home state of Illinois and in all the other populous states, in the pursuit of larger raw vote totals. But it is not the key measurement. We played by the rules, set by you, the DNC members, and campaigned as hard as we could, in as many places as we could, to acquire delegates. Essentially, the popular vote is not much better as a metric than basing the nominee on which candidate raised more money, has more volunteers, contacted more voters, or is taller.

The Clinton campaign was very clear about their own strategy until the numbers become too ominous for them. They were like a broken record , repeating ad nauseum that this nomination race is about delegates. Now, the word delegate has disappeared from their vocabulary, in an attempt to change the rules and create an alternative reality.

We want to be clear – we believe that the winner of a majority of pledged delegates will and should be the nominee of our party. And we estimate that after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries on May 20, we will have won a majority of the overall pledged delegates According to a recent news report, by even their most optimistic estimates the Clinton Campaign expects to trail by more than 100 pledged delegates and will then ask the superdelegates to overturn the will of the voters.

But of course superdelegates are free to and have been utilizing their own criteria for deciding who our nominee should be. Many are deciding on the basis of electability, a favorite Clinton refrain. And if you look at the numbers, during a period where the Clinton campaign has been making an increasingly strident pitch on electability, it is clear their argument is failing miserably with superdelegates.

Since February 5, the Obama campaign has netted 107 superdelegates, and the Clinton campaign only 21. Since the Pennsylvania primary, much of it during the challenging Rev. Wright period, we have netted 24 and the Clinton campaign 17.

At some point – we would argue that time is now – this ceases to be a theoretical exercise about how superdelegates view electability. The reality of the preferences in the last several weeks offer a clear guide of how strongly superdelegates feel Senator Obama will perform in November, both in building a winning campaign for the presidency as well as providing the best electoral climate across the country for all Democratic candidates.

It is important to note that Senator Obama leads Senator Clinton in superdelegate endorsements among Governors, United States Senators and members of the House of Representatives. These elected officials all have a keen sense for who our strongest nominee will be in November.

It is only among DNC members where Senator Clinton holds a lead, which has been rapidly dwindling.

As we head into the final days of the campaign, we just wanted to be clear with you as a party leader, who will be instrumental in making the final decision of who our nominee will be, how we view the race at this point.

Senator Obama, our campaign and our supporters believe pledged delegates is the most legitimate metric for determining how this race has unfolded. It is simply the ratification of the DNC rules – your rules – which we built this campaign and our strategy around.

No Do Overs in Michigan and Florida

DNC chairman howard dean said sorry michigan and florida, no do overs. both states opted early on in the democratic nomination process not to follow the rules of the game. michigan and florida are one part of clinton's strategy to win at all costs.

Michigan and Florida have two options: either submit a new plan for a process for choosing their convention delegates, or appeal to the Convention Credentials Committee, which resolves issues about the seating of delegates.

"The Democratic Nominee will be determined in accordance with party rules, and out of respect for the presidential campaigns and the states that did not violate party rules, we are not going to change the rules in the middle of the game," he said.

update 3-6: obama's name wasn't even on the ballot in michigan, yet clinton is insisting the votes be counted.

Clinton, the New York senator and former first lady, was the only leading Democrat to appear on ballots in Michigan and made a handful of allowed fund-raising appearances in Florida in the last days before the vote, while other candidates skipped the state. She won both contests.

Now, as she trails Obama by 100-plus delegates, Clinton has called for the Michigan and Florida delegations to be seated at the party's convention in Denver, Colorado. cnn

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