Hillary Clinton would seem to have reason to be optimistic about Saturday’s Democratic Party meeting on whether to resurrect some or all of the disqualified delegates from Florida and Michigan.
The panel that will meet in Washington to vote on what to do about the delegations, discounted because the states held them early in violation of party rules, was appointed by her campaign chairman, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe.
It is co-chaired by Alexis Herman, who served as President Clinton’s secretary of labor. One member of the panel is Clinton’s top strategist, Harold Ickes, while a majority of the roster has endorsed her candidacy.
But political experts say there is little chance the panel will grant Clinton’s wish of seating every delegate from Florida and Michigan with a full vote proportional to the primary results, as Ickes said they would request.
“Get real,” University of Virginia political science professor Larry J. Sabato said. “There is no way that is ever going to happen. Ickes knows that and is just using it as a bargaining point.”
Sabato and many other political analysts say the DNC’s 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee will likely favor a compromise solution that seats some of the delegates from those two states.
Clinton won a healthy majority of the votes in Florida and in Michigan, where Barack Obama didn’t even appear on the ballot.
“My guess is they will do something like apportion it roughly as to what the national vote was,” said Columbia University law professor Nathaniel Persily, an election law expert.
Ickes and Clinton communications chief Harold Wolfson said getting every Florida and Michigan delegate seated is a key component to their strategy of winning the nomination.
But by most accounts, Clinton has all but lost to Obama and trails him by nearly 200 delegates in most counts.
Political experts argue that even if Clinton’s demands were met, she would not gain nearly enough delegates to close the gap with Obama, though she would close in on the popular vote.
Clinton won 50 percent of the vote in Florida and 56 percent in Michigan. Obama won 33 percent of Florida’s vote, while his decision to honor Democratic Party rules and stay off Michigan’s ballot left him with a zero in that state.
“When you look at the mathematics of it all, Obama can win without an equal apportionment of the Florida and Michigan delegates,” said University of Minnesota Law School Dean Guy-Uriel Charles, an election law expert.
Democratic political consultant Peter Fenn believes the panel will give the two states partial seating to discourage states from moving up future primaries.
“If you seat them all and give them a full vote, then basically what you are saying for 2012 is that chaos reigns,” Fenn said.
Sabato said the individual members of the panel, even those who back Clinton, will be weighing their own political futures on Saturday as well.
“If you start factoring personal ambition, and it is clear Obama is going to get the nomination, I’ll bet nothing happens to upset his apple cart.”
