Why Obama supporters should support MI and FL re-votes, seriously.

[ORDem]

Excerpts from Tapped - The American Prospect (emphasis below mine):

...What would happen if an agreement were announced today that there would be re-votes in Florida and Michigan? Immediately, the previous primaries in those states would become dead letters. Instead of being 200,000 votes down in the popular vote (by her campaign's count), or 500,000 down (by my count, which gives Clinton her Florida votes), Clinton would be down in the popular vote by almost 1 million. And 193 delegates that they are currently counting would suddenly disappear. And at that point, the magnitude of Clinton's deficit would be too obvious to spin away. Yes, there would be two additional large-state contests in which to win back the million popular votes and hundreds of delegates. But unless she did significantly better in both states than she did in the illegal primaries, she would lose, not gain, ground, by her own calculations. ... Re-votes cannot help Clinton be "perceived" as the winner of the popular vote....

Clinton's only ally is uncertainty. The minute it becomes clear what will happen with Michigan and Florida -- re-vote them, refuse to seat them, or split them 50-50 or with half-votes, as some have proposed -- is the minute that Clinton's last "path to the nomination" closes. The only way to keep spin alive is to keep uncertainty alive....


I would only add that if there are MI and FL re-votes that the situation for Clinton is worse than what Mark Schmitt postulates, since these new primaries would most certainly come at the end of the primary season (in fairness to states that did not violate DNC rules) thus making Clinton's greater deficit hanging over her for a loooonnnngggg time.

On Edit: Yikes! I mis-attributed the source in the OP. How careless, I apologize

[msongs]

1. party rules support a revote, so if MI/FL can swing, it should be allowed.

just as intentionally violating the rules contained a penalty, so should the states be allowed, under the rules, to conduct another vote if they so choose and the affected parties can agree on a course of action. either candidate can support or deny such a revote because it is within their rights to do so.

Msongs

[dsc]

2. that is close to the stupidest thing I have ever read

How on earth could she lose ground if she does exactly as well as before? Does this guy even read what he writes?

[ORDem]

3. My bad. With this additional excerpt perhaps it becomes clear.

Remember that Obama was not on the ballot in MI and it was not a two-person race in FL in January.

... Since she was on the ballot alone in Michigan before, it's highly unlikely that she will do better there. It's very possible that she could do better than the 50 percent she won in Florida in January, but since it would now be a two-person race, it's a dead certainty that Obama would do significantly better than the 32 percent he got in January, thus adding to his total popular vote margin and delegate count even if he lost again, and so it would be a net loss for Clinton. ...

[Juche]

4. I agree

If Obama loses 45-55 in those two states he still nets about 150 delegates and he already has 1411. So add in another 250 from the remaining competitions and he is at 1811, with his 200 superdelegates plus the ones he'll win in the next few months he wins the nomination.
And because he caved into Hillary's idea of doing a revote she can't complain about him winning.

[grantcart]

5. If you include FL/MI the magic number for nomination goes up

to 2208

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

6. And, perhaps most importantly...

If Obama is the nominee of a divided party it doesn't help him to have the "what if?" stuff hanging over his head.

If he wins the nomination by less total votes than FL and MI would have had it's a problem. Of course Hillary wouldn't get 100% of those missing delegates, but until there's a real election it's open to speculation.

With a divided party, Obama need to be the nominee of 100% of the country, not 90%.

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. I've supported a revote all along.

It's the only equitable solution for all involved (the state parties, the voters, and the candidates).