What I Don't Get about This DNC Rules Committee and Michigan

The main argument from the Clinton campaign seems to be that the votes of Michigan and Florida need to be respected as they were cast on election day, never mind the voters that cast write-in ballots, and never mind the voting-eligible public that stayed home because they were informed that the Michigan election would be invalidated.

The Clinton camp is twisting logic, though. They want not only to have the entire vote from that day counted, but also the delegates attached to them.

The delegates are entirely separate from the vote. If Michigan was given 10 delegates, 100 delegates or 1000 delegates from their election, the breakdown of those delegates would be based on the vote breakdown. The number of delegates given to Michigan by the DNC is not sacred. However, the Clinton camp is using an implicit argument that there is a delegate to vote metric in play that should be honored. This implicit argument wants to use the popular vote measure as the sacred rule, then transfer that immutability to the delegate count as well, which obviously is not.

The number of delegates has nothing to do with the number of people voting. I showed this earlier with the contrast between Indiana and Missouri, in which 423,000 more people came out to vote in Indiana than in Missouri, but both states only got 72 delegates.

If the Clinton campaign is so interested in counting every vote, then the compromise is easy. Michigan's 128 pledged delegates should be halved to 64 pledged delegates, and those 64 delegates should be apportioned based on the vote in Michigan, so long as the uncommitted vote is dealt to Obama.

This would create a 36.5 - 27.5 split of pledged delegates, but still honor the votes that were counted.

What to do with the superdelegates? Halve their vote. The Clinton argument for using the actual vote from January to seat the pledged delegates does not transfer to the undemocratically selected superdelegates, who have seats based on political standing. Senator Clinton would have a tough time arguing that the spirit of democracry she is pursuing for the pledged delegates based on the actual vote applies to the backroom superdelegates.

Conclusion:

Give Michigan 64 full pledged delegates to allocated based on the vote of the day, thus preserving the spirit of the vote and the voters' "intent", no matter how flawed or incomplete that metric is.

Give Michigan 30 half-votes for its 30 superdelegates (28 automatic delegates + 2 add-on delegates), for 15 superdelegate votes.

Michigan's delegation would then be 79 total delegates: 64 whole pledged delegates and 15 (30 half-counted) superdelegates.

Simple, and it honors the Clinton "argument" about the will of the voter and the DNC Rules committee argument that the state, and not the voters, should be punished for its blatant disrespect of the DNC primary process. The right to vote will be honored, but there is no constitutional or sacred right that the delegates apportioned in the state should be kept the same by the very rules-maker that has the right to make the rules as the party sees fit.