TalkLeft relayed an interesting portion of a CNN interview with Karl Rove, regarding how to solve the MI/FL delegate mess:
I actually think Senator Obama has the capacity to resolve this situation in a way that gives him a big advantage, but it would have to be a gutsy call.
And that is, at some point, probably in June, after the delegates have all been elected [...], it would be a gutsy call if Senator Obama stepped forward and said, I want to seat Florida and I want to seat Michigan. I know they did the wrong thing, but we did the wrong—but we should not compound our error by not seating them. Seat the entire delegations.
Now, if he is ahead by 100 to 150 votes at that point, by my calculations, she picks up 54 delegates on him if these two delegations are seated, and it—but it is a gutsy call. And he—you know, if he is 150 ahead, he suddenly becomes 100 ahead. If he is 100 ahead, he suddenly becomes 50 ahead.
But I think it gives him—it makes him look like a leader. It resolves the situation. It helps him in the fall in these two states. And it probably gets a lot of the superdelegates to step forward and say, that was a courageous move, and I am going to support him as a result of him doing this.
I could actually envision that happening…especially if Obama maintains his perceived 100-plus delegate lead.
Failing that, another alternative would of course be to hold the superdelegate caucus in June that Governor Bredesen has called for. If, after the the superdelegates have weighed in, Obama has a margin of comfortably more than 54 delegates…seat Michigan and Florida, and make sure there’s a plank in the party platform calling for primary reform to prevent such silliness from happening again.
It’s also probably worth noting, as an aside, that Electoral-Vote.com has started posting its running electoral vote projections, using hypothetical Clinton-McCain and Obama-McCain matchups. In both cases, McCain is ahead, although the Hillary-McCain matchup is closer than Obama-McCain. However, how much of the Democratic weakness is the result of intraparty bickering remains to be seen.
Even though I’d prefer to see divided government (if the Dems will control Congress, I’d prefer to have a Republican in the White House), I’ll try to not pay too much attention to the electoral vote projections until convention season; the numbers have to be distorted by the Hillary-Obama brawl.