Is there any other reason for him to not give in to Hillary's demands on the Florida and Michigan delegates? As it stands now, with the 50% deal that was struck yesterday, Obama is 66 delegates short of locking up the nomination. In the last two months, I think he's far outpacing Clinton in super delegates, even though Clinton has had the best of Obama in the primary contests. By appearances, Obama needs just to wait this thing out and he'll continue to rack up the super delegates necessary to get the nomination.
By my calculation, if you gave Florida and Michigan their full allotments, and gave Hillary the share that she demands in Michigan, then the new number for nomination would be 2198, and Obama would have 2112, putting him just 86 short of the nomination. Wouldn't a magnanimous move by Obama to seat all those delegates take a legitimate argument away from Clinton? There seems to be little doubt that the current Obama position will foster some hard feelings among some Clinton supporters, and perhaps some voters. Why take that chance when it seems apparent that you're going to put the nomination away anyway?
Obama is merely being prudent. Until he has the nomination clinched, there is no telling what Hillary will pull. Remember her representative, Harold Ickes, was for the rule barring any delegates from being seated from any state that violated the primary rules back when she was the prohibitive favorite for the nomination. The candidates had an understanding to pull their names from the ballots, which Edwards and Obama did, but Hillary double crossed them and left her name as the only one on the ballot so she would get all the votes. There is absolutely nothing that Hillary would not do to get this nomination. The only thing that will defeat her is for Obama to get more votes than she does, so he should hang on to every delegate he can until he has the nomination.
I don't think he's as scared as much as wanting to wrap it up as quickly and cleanly as possible so he can attend to the task of bringing the party back together in a united front for the general election fight, which of course can only help his chances come November. That said I'm sure there is at least some concerns that Hillary will pull a rabbit out of her hat if he's not careful. Better safe than sorry. He didn't watch his back in Michigan, but got a save in the end. He's probably just being cautious.
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Glock21 Op/Ed
Also, I think the DNC wants to make sure that the FL and MI are punished for pushing up their primary schedules, and wouldn't want to seat the delegations at full strength, even if Obama wanted them too.
"Wouldn't a magnanimous move by Obama to seat all those delegates take a legitimate argument away from Clinton?"
I suppose Obama could have made the offer, but the consequences were already clear. Check out Rule 20(C)(1) on page 3 of this Implementation Challaneges document for the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee.
Just think of the possibilities when Obama gets selected...
Bumper stickers.... "Obama - Selected NOT Elected"
"Hillary won the popular vote, but lost anyway"
Many of those OwlGore 2004 sayings can be recycled all over again...!
I really don't know why but I was listening to some of the discussion over the weekend and it sounded like to me that New Hampshire actually caused some of the problem by messing up an agreement that was a few election cycles in the making. Carl Levin was pretty hot as he explained how the early states had not followed though on some of the 2004 agreements and the DNC had not punished them but did punish Michigan.
Remember that Hillary's "win" of the popular vote excludes those who voted for "uncommitted" in Michigan. It also excludes the votes in all of the caucus states, where popular vote is not counted. If Obama had run a campaign in Florida, and his name had actually been on the ballot in Michigan, and we counted the caucus states, he would probably be approaching 19 million total votes, the most any primary candidate has ever received, by far.
This is just another example of how badly the Clinton's have damaged their brand name since the beginning of this cycle. This kind of numbers manipulation and straight-out lying has really gotten old. It is what we expect from the Republicans like McCain, who continues to twist his phrases and parse his words has he runs gallantly away from his independence. I once thought a Clinton/McCain showdown would be one of the most civil elections in recent memory. Now I just think it would be the biggest spewing of BS this side of the south farms.
In other news, Obama seems to be doing quite well for himself in recent polling.
I have said it before. The reason this was such a rough-and-tumble primary is because the person who wins the nomination is going to be sitting pretty come November. Obama has closed the white man gap to 4 points? Get out of here.
I see now somehow the democratic primary problems are McCain’s fault.