I was looking at Chris Cillizza’s commentary on how much harder the Michigan case will be to settle than Florida when some other questions crossed my mind. One of the chief ones is, how do they decide who gets (and more importantly keeps) a voting seat on the Rules and Bylaws Committee? There are a couple of members who CNN regularly labels as “Obama Superdelegates” and others (who seem to be in larger numbers) who are marked as being supers for Clinton. Most puzzling of all is the fact that Howard Ickes is sitting on the panel that will effectively decide how many delegates (if any) each of the candidates receives. Ickes is actually one of the honchos on Hillary Clinton’s campaign and every question he has asked or comment he’s made has made that abundantly clear. He’s not there to find an “equitable solution” to this conundrum. He’s there to pull out a win for Hillary to still get the nomination. The other committed supers have behaved much the same on each side.
For the Florida question, at least one member who was from Florida was mentioned as being excluded from voting. OK… is that somehow less of an undue influence than being a staffer for one of the candidates? Or already being committed to either? This is very strange indeed.
Also, the “lunch break” was listed as running until 4:15 pm Eastern. As of this writing it is already ten after five. Are they already voting behind closed doors with no more debate? That would seem far beyond the pale.
The more this event goes on, the more my jaw is dropping at what I’m seeing. Parties have rules. Two states broke those rules. I know there are outside political considerations, but seriously… who’s running this circus?