TPM Reader RR sees the angle …
Doesn’t the argument over seating Florida and Michigan delegates miss the smaller point, so to speak?
Nothing Hillary says can actually browbeat her rivals, so nothing she says now has any direct bearing on whether those delegates are seated or not. As you said, there’s little doubt that delegates from FL and MI will be seated in one way or another. If Hillary wins without them, she’ll seat them. If Obama wins by an ample margin, he will play
generous and seat them. If he wins by a narrow margin, some other process such as caucuses will be ginned up to seat pro-Obama delegations. So why did Hillary raise the question at all?I speculate that she raised it for one purpose only – to heighten the profile of the Florida Dem primary on Tuesday. Hillary will almost certainly lose SC today, and possibly wash out to third: a negative media cycle for her. If she had her way, South Carolina would vanish into N-space before the polls close, and not re-establish contact with the outside universe until February 6. Since she can’t arrange that, she
is aiming for the next best thing – a rapid shift of media attention to FL, and heavy coverage of her probable big win there. She wants the FL win, not the SC loss, to be what resonates through the echo chamber during the week leading up to Super Tuesday.So how does she shift the media’s focus to Florida? Partly by reminding them that her delegates may be seated after all. More subtly, however, talking about Florida is a way to campaign there without setting foot in the state, and without technically violating the rules against campaigning there. FL Dems are paying attention. The larger their
turnout on Tuesday, the more attention the media will pay. If their turnout rivals or even exceeds GOP turnout, that in itself will be a story, further amping up coverage of the Dem results – and Hillary’s presumed big win.As so often in this last three weeks, one gets the impression that Hillary’s team is playing a move ahead of both Obama and the media.
