Very interesting Roll Call story this morning: It seems the senior Democratic senators from Michigan and Florida oppose against any do-over votes in their states.
Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) dismissed the possibility in interviews on Tuesday. Levin and Nelson said caucuses would effectively void the primaries in each of their states, and are pushing to have their delegates receive full voting power at the convention.
“You can’t undo an election with a caucus, especially one where 1.75 million Florida Democrats voted,” said Nelson, who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit last year seeking to overturn the national party’s decision to strip Florida of its delegates.
Levin had similar thoughts. “It would not be practical or fair to hold a caucus,” Levin said. “You’ve got 600,000 people who voted. You can’t just throw out the votes of 600,000 people.” Levin said the state will appeal to have its delegates restored by the party convention’s credentials committee this summer....
Asked about the fact that Clinton appeared on the Michigan ballot and Obama did not, Levin noted that it was Obama’s choice to withdraw his name.
“I was disappointed that he did,” Levin said.
Throw in NAACP chairman Julian Bond's recent statement to this effect, and Hillary is starting to gather some support for seating FL and MI that can't be completely laughed off, politically, however you may feel about the merits.
P.S. Interesting footnote: Al Sharpton strongly rebuked Bond for his position, smacking him for "politics in its form most raw."
Update: Commenter vacentrist warns against conflating generic calls for seating the FL and MI delegations with calls for seating them specifically in the ratio dictated by last month's primary outcomes. I'm not quite sure how the former scenario would work and what it would entail, but I suppose it bears further investigation. Regardless I do think it's clearly newsworthy, at a minimum, that Levin and Nelson oppose holding new votes, something I suspect Hillary is happy about even if they're not specifically calling to seat pro-Hillary delegations.
Also: Commenter bradigan spotlights Levin's "you can't just throw out the votes" comment. Doesn't sound very generic to me, either. But more to come on this, no doubt, so please help us illuminate in comments.
--Michael Crowley