Democrats Reach Compromise While Clinton Threatens Convention Fight

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KACQuZVAE3s]

Despite all the protests outside and hissing from Clinton supporters inside, the rules committee actually managed to end the day with a compromise. Clinton picks up a net of 24 delegates. This is more than she deserves but, as I discussed earlier, it is far smarter for Obama to accept such a deal. Obama shows himself to be willing to compromise for the good of the party while the Clinton campaign will continue to lose support from superdelegates with stunts such as threatening to take this to the convention.

The Clinton campaign continued to be embarrassed by the action of their supporters. While normally a campaign might not be blamed for such statements, in this case it is warranted considering how the Clinton campaign has encouraged the protests. To add to the video and reports of the protests I posted earlier, there is another video (above) showing a Clinton supporter indicating support for McCain over Clinton.

It is remarkable how, after starting out as appearing like the inevitable winner, the Clintons managed both to totally destroy any future for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party and destroy the legacy of the Clinton presidency. Bill and Hillary Clinton have become the Richard Nixons of the Democratic Party.

Update: It turns out that Obama had the votes to obtain a 50:50 split on the Michigan delegates but would have only won by a couple of votes. Instead he chose to go for the compromise allowing Clinton more delegates than she really deserved, allowing this to pass 19-8. While the Clinton supporters will still claim this is unfair, despite the fact that Obama would have done far better if a sanctioned primary was actually held, having the compromise pass by this larger margin will prevent very many people from taking Clinton’s complaints seriously.

Obama could afford to give up these extra delegates. After today’s changes, he only needs 62.5 delegates to win the nomination. Clinton needs 238 to win. The final primaries should give Obama over forty additional delegates, meaning he will only need to pick up about twenty more superdelegates to clinch the nomination.

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