Lanny Davis' insane proposal:

He writes:

... what is the fairest solution for the Rules Committee ... ?

It is rather simple. Go back, in effect, to the status quo ante and make some reasonable and fair adjustments.

In Michigan, Clinton received 55 percent of the vote. According to Thegreenpapers.com, she thus should receive 73 pledged delegates based on that percentage.

What about the 50 remaining uncommitted delegates, and 7 collectively cast for Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, who were also on the ballot?

Some of those 50 delegates might have been for Clinton as a second choice to candidates other than Obama, so it would be totally unfair to award all 50 delegates to Obama. ...

The Rules Committee has several options. The fairest would be to allocate those 57 pledged delegates, to Clinton and Obama by the same ratio of their standing to one another in the average of the most recent Michigan statewide polls prior to the Jan. 15 primary.

By Davis' reckoning, "uncommitted" includes hidden Hillary supporters, in a ratio proportional to state wide polls, even though Hillary was on the ballot opposite "uncommitted". Davis doesn't really believe in this. It's simply a maximalist position from which the Clinton camp can "compromise" from. And another thing. Why not simply let the "uncommitted" go to the convention as uncommitted?

Andrew Sullivan:

The upshot of Davis' chutzpah is that Clinton should get 102 out of 130 delegates in Michigan. ...

There is no conceivable way that Clinton would have won Michigan by a margin of 102 - 28, or 78 to 22 percent, a far bigger margin than Clinton win in any other primary or caucus. And yet that's what the Clintonites are demanding.

UPDATE: You knew it would happen. Jeralyn at Talk Left has a post: Lanny Davis Proposes Very Fair Florida-Michigan Solution


posted by Quiddity at 5/26/2008 06:41:00 PM