Reply #18: The Gang of Four released its own letter today.. [View All]

[Doityourself]

laying out political consequences if the committee does punish Michigan:

"Senator Clinton and Senator Obama understand that penalizing Michigan would needlessly and pointlessly wound their candidacy. If you vote to penalize Michigan, you will keep this issue alive, distracting from the real issues in the campaign. You would also be penalizing our candidates and our party, and ultimately our nation, because you would be weakening our nominee's chances of winning Michigan, a state that is critical to our winning the White House in November."


In the midst of Democratic National Committeeman Joel Ferguson's delegate plan schizophrenia, the media missed a big story: Barack Obama supports the Michigan Democratic Party's compromise. In fact, that just might explain some of the Clinton hysteria.

The MDP plan awards 69 Michigan delegates for Hillary Clinton and 59 for Obama. Sen. Obama wanted a 64-64 delegate split and Clinton originally wanted a 73-55 division. Now Clintonistas have taken a harder line (more on that in a moment).

The Obama campaign supports seating the Florida and Michigan delegations in full, Obama's Michigan campaign director Michael Simon told me. A Democratic National Committee (DNC) memo indicates only half the delegates can be seated, but it might be possible for the entire delegations to go and their votes be worth half.

"That is not an acceptable solution. We'll be pretty disappointed if they're docked by half, but Barack Obama is not the nominee yet," Simon said. "That's something that he will work swiftly to prevent when he is the nominee."

Meanwhile, Ferguson -- who's ironically set to argue the MDP's case Saturday to the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, says Obama should get zero delegates here.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1646