Two New Plans for MI and FL, Both Doomed to Fail

Two new plans are being floated for seating the Dem delegates from Michigan and Florida, and both are doomed to fail. First, from Michigan:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Christopher Dodd said Monday there's a simple way to end the wrangling between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama over Florida and Michigan delegates: divide them evenly between the two Democratic presidential candidates.

"Split up the delegations, let 'em each have 50% of it and move on," Dodd said. "You don't have to go back over and re-do these things."

Dodd is an Obama supporter and the Clintons will never approve a split because it doesn't advance her goal of closing the delegate gap. Dead plan walking.

And now, from Florida:

"Entering a new phase of wrangling over Florida's disputed presidential primary, state Democrats are pitching formulas to seat at least half of the state's delegates based on the Jan. 29 election," reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The proposal: "Seat half of Florida's 188 pledged delegates based on the Jan. 29 results and half based on the national vote. Florida's 22 so-called superdelegates, who are among the 800 party insiders and elected officials who get a vote at the convention, also would be counted."

Obama will never approve this because he didn't campaign in Florida and got spanked pretty badly in the faux primary. Dead plan #2 walking.

And what about all those superdelegates? In an op-ed in the NY Times Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen is proposing a "superdelegate convention":

Here’s what our party should do: schedule a superdelegate primary. In early June, after the final primaries, the Democratic National Committee should call together our superdelegates in a public caucus.

Of the 795 superdelegates, over 40 percent have not announced which candidate they are supporting; I’m one of them. While it would be comfortable for me to delay making a decision until the convention, the reality is that I’ll have all the information I reasonably need in June, and so will my colleagues across the country.

There will have been more than 20 debates, and more than 28 million Americans will have made their choices and voted. Any remaining uncertainty in our nominee will then lie with the superdelegates, and it will be time for us to make our choices and get on with the business of electing a president.

This is not a proposal for a mini-convention with all the attendant hoopla and sideshows. It is a call for a tight, two-day business-like gathering, whose rules would be devised by the national committee, of the leaders of our party from all over America to resolve a serious problem.

There would be a final opportunity for the candidates to make their arguments to these delegates, and then one transparent vote.

In other words, the final nominee would be determined by this convention rather than the main convention in Denver, because the votes of the superdelegates will eventually be the deciding factor. Can you imagine the uproar from the rank-and-file Democrats over this? Dead plan #3 walking.

The confusion continues, much to the delight of moi.