The legal analysis, sent late Tuesday to the party’s rules committee, is expected to guide a meeting this weekend where the committee will try to settle one of the most contentious issues remaining in the Democratic presidential race: what to do with delegates from Florida and Michigan, which violated party rules by moving up their primaries ahead of Feb. 5.
Mrs. Clinton had hoped for the full Florida and Michigan delegations to be seated, and for their votes to be apportioned according to the results in their primaries, which she won. But the lawyers’ analysis said that as punishment for the primaries’ being held early, party rules allowed the states nothing more than that their delegations be cut in half, or that the full delegations be seated with each delegate getting only half a vote.
As a result, Mrs. Clinton would appear to need all the more superdelegates to swing her way if she has any remaining hope for the nomination.
To that end, she stepped up her appeal Wednesday to superdelegates, the Democratic officeholders and party officials who could ultimately decide the nomination. In a letter, she argued that she would be a stronger nominee than Mr. Obama against Senator John McCain in the fall.
She leads in polls in swing states, the letter said, has support from regions and demographics that the Democrats need, is ahead of Mr. McCain in Gallup national tracking polls while Mr. Obama is behind him, and is better positioned to win in the Electoral College, mainly because she leads Mr. McCain in polls in Ohio and Florida.
The Democratic nominating battle has only three primaries left, and all take place over the next week, in Puerto Rico on Sunday and in Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Mr. Obama may be poised to claim the nomination after those contests, though he will need additional superdelegates to do so.
Mr. Obama is now a mere 51 delegates short of the 2,026 needed for the nomination. Those numbers do not count Florida and Michigan, and so they could be altered somewhat by the results of the rules committee’s meeting.
The committee is to convene Saturday at a Washington hotel. Demonstrations are expected there on Mrs. Clinton’s behalf; the Clinton campaign has said it is not organizing them but has not discouraged them.
David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, said the Obama camp had advised against rallies, despite calls on the Internet for counterprotests. Mr. Plouffe said the campaign did not want to contribute to a chaotic scene, which, he said, would not serve the interests of party unity.
Mrs. Clinton’s organization is still hoping that the rules committee seats at least some of the Florida and Michigan delegates. Such a decision could legitimize her claims to hundreds of thousands of popular votes in the two states and bolster her assertion that she leads Mr. Obama in popular votes nationally, though he did not even appear on the ballot n Michigan.
Whatever the committee decides, Mrs. Clinton could appeal its decision by undertaking a credentials fight at the convention.
For now, though, both campaigns are negotiating with the committee’s co-chairmen. Mr. Obama has said he wants Florida and Michigan delegates seated. He has not specified how many, or how they should be apportioned, but on Wednesday, Mr. Plouffe told reporters that Mrs. Clinton was “going to end up netting delegates if there’s a compromise here, and we think that’s a pretty major concession.”
It is not a concession the Obama camp would make, of course, if it in any way threatened Mr. Obama’s delegate lead.
The committee has several sticky issues to address. That Mr. Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan, for example, raises the question of what proportion of delegates he might be awarded, if any, from that state. One compromise calls for him to be awarded the 40 percent received by “uncommitted.”
In addition, the committee, while trying not to alienate voters in these two battleground states, does want to send a signal to all states that it will punish them if they try to jump ahead in the presidential primaries four years from now.
Mrs. Clinton pressed her case Wednesday on multiple fronts: on the campaign trail, in a written fund-raising appeal and in the letter to superdelegates.
Accompanying that letter was a fact sheet citing a quotation from Mr. Obama that suggested there might be some injustice if the nomination was not given to the candidate with the most popular votes.
“On February 8th,” it said, “Senator Obama said that if someone had the most pledged delegates and the most votes in the country, that ‘it would be problematic for political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters.’ It appears that when all the votes are counted June 3rd, Hillary Clinton will be the candidate with the most votes.”
Mrs. Clinton was accompanied by a skeleton crew of aides and a diminished press corps Wednesday as she continued to tour some of the remotest parts of America. After a tourist stop at Mount Rushmore, she drove nearly three hours across the desolate Badlands to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and made her electability argument to a somewhat bewildered crowd of about 250 people outside the Little Wound School.
“I believe the electoral votes that I will win make a very strong argument,” she said. “Look at the states I won and will win. These are the states that form the base of a Democratic victory.”
But there was also an elegiac tone to some of her remarks.
“I view my run for president as a solemn obligation,” she said. “I don’t run for president because I need any more publicity. I don’t run for president because I need the adulation or the celebrity. I don’t run for president to live in the White House. That was a wonderful experience, but that’s not why I run. I run because I believe we can do so much better for our country. The unkept promises are corrosive.”
Florida and Michigan May See Delegates Halved
The legal analysis, sent late Tuesday to the party’s rules committee, is expected to guide a meeting this weekend where the committee will try to settle one of the most contentious issues remaining in the Democratic presidential race: what to do with delegates from Florida and Michigan, which violated party rules by moving up their primaries ahead of Feb. 5.
Mrs. Clinton had hoped for the full Florida and Michigan delegations to be seated, and for their votes to be apportioned according to the results in their primaries, which she won. But the lawyers’ analysis said that as punishment for the primaries’ being held early, party rules allowed the states nothing more than that their delegations be cut in half, or that the full delegations be seated with each delegate getting only half a vote.
As a result, Mrs. Clinton would appear to need all the more superdelegates to swing her way if she has any remaining hope for the nomination.
To that end, she stepped up her appeal Wednesday to superdelegates, the Democratic officeholders and party officials who could ultimately decide the nomination. In a letter, she argued that she would be a stronger nominee than Mr. Obama against Senator John McCain in the fall.
She leads in polls in swing states, the letter said, has support from regions and demographics that the Democrats need, is ahead of Mr. McCain in Gallup national tracking polls while Mr. Obama is behind him, and is better positioned to win in the Electoral College, mainly because she leads Mr. McCain in polls in Ohio and Florida.
The Democratic nominating battle has only three primaries left, and all take place over the next week, in Puerto Rico on Sunday and in Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Mr. Obama may be poised to claim the nomination after those contests, though he will need additional superdelegates to do so.
Mr. Obama is now a mere 51 delegates short of the 2,026 needed for the nomination. Those numbers do not count Florida and Michigan, and so they could be altered somewhat by the results of the rules committee’s meeting.
The committee is to convene Saturday at a Washington hotel. Demonstrations are expected there on Mrs. Clinton’s behalf; the Clinton campaign has said it is not organizing them but has not discouraged them.
David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, said the Obama camp had advised against rallies, despite calls on the Internet for counterprotests. Mr. Plouffe said the campaign did not want to contribute to a chaotic scene, which, he said, would not serve the interests of party unity.
Mrs. Clinton’s organization is still hoping that the rules committee seats at least some of the Florida and Michigan delegates. Such a decision could legitimize her claims to hundreds of thousands of popular votes in the two states and bolster her assertion that she leads Mr. Obama in popular votes nationally, though he did not even appear on the ballot n Michigan.
Whatever the committee decides, Mrs. Clinton could appeal its decision by undertaking a credentials fight at the convention.
For now, though, both campaigns are negotiating with the committee’s co-chairmen. Mr. Obama has said he wants Florida and Michigan delegates seated. He has not specified how many, or how they should be apportioned, but on Wednesday, Mr. Plouffe told reporters that Mrs. Clinton was “going to end up netting delegates if there’s a compromise here, and we think that’s a pretty major concession.”
It is not a concession the Obama camp would make, of course, if it in any way threatened Mr. Obama’s delegate lead.
The committee has several sticky issues to address. That Mr. Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan, for example, raises the question of what proportion of delegates he might be awarded, if any, from that state. One compromise calls for him to be awarded the 40 percent received by “uncommitted.”
In addition, the committee, while trying not to alienate voters in these two battleground states, does want to send a signal to all states that it will punish them if they try to jump ahead in the presidential primaries four years from now.
Mrs. Clinton pressed her case Wednesday on multiple fronts: on the campaign trail, in a written fund-raising appeal and in the letter to superdelegates.
Accompanying that letter was a fact sheet citing a quotation from Mr. Obama that suggested there might be some injustice if the nomination was not given to the candidate with the most popular votes.
“On February 8th,” it said, “Senator Obama said that if someone had the most pledged delegates and the most votes in the country, that ‘it would be problematic for political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters.’ It appears that when all the votes are counted June 3rd, Hillary Clinton will be the candidate with the most votes.”
Mrs. Clinton was accompanied by a skeleton crew of aides and a diminished press corps Wednesday as she continued to tour some of the remotest parts of America. After a tourist stop at Mount Rushmore, she drove nearly three hours across the desolate Badlands to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and made her electability argument to a somewhat bewildered crowd of about 250 people outside the Little Wound School.
“I believe the electoral votes that I will win make a very strong argument,” she said. “Look at the states I won and will win. These are the states that form the base of a Democratic victory.”
But there was also an elegiac tone to some of her remarks.
“I view my run for president as a solemn obligation,” she said. “I don’t run for president because I need any more publicity. I don’t run for president because I need the adulation or the celebrity. I don’t run for president to live in the White House. That was a wonderful experience, but that’s not why I run. I run because I believe we can do so much better for our country. The unkept promises are corrosive.”
