The answer: Probably not by much, and possibly quite the opposite.

Genius, I tell ya!
Absolute Genius! Absolutely!
Or it unquestionable?

Yeah, which makes the push by the Clinton campaign to have a do-over interesting.

I think they should have a do-over. I just don't see that it's going to have any significant effect one way or the other.

But then, I'm not Mark Penn.

And it's all irrelevant anyway because Michigan isn't going to revote.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0308/Doover_is_dead.html

THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!

So why is Clinton pushing so hard for this? Some possibilities:

1) She thinks Michigan and Florida delegates won't be seated without revotes, and believes that she'll get at least some delegates from revotes. Maybe not enough to catch up to Obama, but perhaps enough to make the superdelegates feel OK voting for her.

2) She wants to draw the contest out as long as possible in the hope that Obama flames out.

3) She doesn't expect the revotes to happen, but WANTS to get Obama on record opposing them--and to make it look like it's his fault that the revotes fell through. Then she can argue that the delegates from both states should be seated according to the original vote count. If Obama objects, her line would be, "Well, we could have had revotes if you hadn't opposed them."

Any others?

Ahem...no shit?

But delegates don't matter, right?

Why is the Obama campaign oblivious to the effect of their attempts to block the vote? Even if Hillary would barely gain any delegates, the harder the Obama campaign fights the vote the worse it makes them look.

I think Clinton knows it is not gonna happen, what with the Senate saying it isn't going to happen, and the legal issues of the Open Primary of WI (but not open in the do over) -so Clinton's new task to spin this into Obama's fault. Furthering her campaign to destroy Obama's chance of winning a general election she can't win if she continues her slash and burn campaign.

Frankly the reason she wants a revote is to keep the process going. She knows she can't win the pledged delegate count with Michigan, but if it means she can keep going long enough to make Obama look terrible then she can win over the superdelegates who would rather have a "clean" candidate than the right candidate. It takes a really big stretch of the imagination to see Clinton as cleaner than Barack, but whatev. It take a really big stretch of the imagination to think a lot of things that the Clinton camp would like us to think.

What MikeMo said. She's playing for time. If, tomorrow, an agreement were reached for splitting the MI and FL delegations, her campaign would be over- because even in fantasy-land, it would be clear that she can't conceivably pick up enough delegates to matter, and the supers would come under irresistible pressure to pull the plug. Keeping MI and FL as live issues for as long as possible keeps alive the delusion that she has a real shot, buying time in which she can hope for a miracle or an Obama implosion or a mass conversion of supers to her cause or God knows what. Basically, it keeps her cycling among the denial /bargaining / anger stages of grief and puts off the painful transition to depression and finally acceptance. That's ALL this is about. And it's pathetic that the party leaders don't have the backbone to put a stop to it.

State Rep. Matt Gillard, D-Alpena, said the do-over primary will create as many problems as it solves, including barring participation by Democrats who, because they thought their party's Jan. 15 primary was a farce, voted for a Republican.
"This won't work," Gillard said. "People were told the Jan. 15 primary didn't matter. Now they're being told if they voted in it, they can't vote in one that does matter."

My take on the situation is that she isn't so much pushing hard for a revote, but she's pushing right now to highlight the "injustice" of not giving Michigan a voice in the nomination process. A revote won't help her for many different reasons, but sitting the delegates as they currently stand emphatically does.

Also, by making this 11th hour press push right before the Michigan revote is given up on, she's hoping to posture as taking the high road to Michigan voters, which helps her poll numbers there, while hurting Barack's.

This thing in Michigan has been a done deal for a very long time. It was done when they held the first vote with open primaries, where many Democrats voted in the GOP primary, and won't be able to vote again in Just. But it's in Clinton's interests to cause as much residual damage to Obama as possible. If by painting Obama today as the Bad Guy in this Michigan situation lowers his November chances against McCain, in Clinton's eyes, so much the better.

And the press happily plays along.

No one stopped Obama and Edwards from being on the Michigan ballot in Michigan. They appeared on the ballot in Florida. The constant anti Hillary whining from this Blog and Obama campaign is starting to wear thin. I want a candidate willing to fight for the nomination and win the general election.

If the delegates are seated as voted in Fl and MI, Hillary will pick up something like 57 delegates net. I think that makes a serious dent in Obama's delegate lead, doesn't it? I think it gets him down to under a hundred. And with the current commitments of supers gets him down to under fifty.

If his pledged delegate lead is under one hundred and total delegate lead is under fifty, then I don't think he has a case at all that because he's won barely more pledged delegates that the supers ought willingly to disenfranchise themselves and go with the winner of the pledge delegates.

Why would they? Do a thought experiment. Suppose he has a lead of just two or three pledge delegates. Does that give him an impregnable moral claim to the nomination sufficient to cause the supers to surrender their free-agency?

Well, suppose it's twenty? Does that do it? I don't think so.

What's the cut-off point? What size of a lead does it take for the supers to say "Oh well, we should just give up all discretion!"

I don't actually think there is ANY size of lead that could morally require them to do so -- especially given the mess in Florida and Michigan. The meme that the super delegates somehow have no moral right to vote their own consciences is pure political posturing by Obama and his enablers in the media and the party. I can imagine that if I were a superdelegate, I would resent it and recognize it for what it is -- pressure politics parading as moral superiority.

Anyway, it's obvious what's in this for Hillary. She's going to do anything she can to reduce his lead, whatever it ends up being, to something clearly morally insignificant and whatever she can to keep this contest going. Extending the contest favors her, not him. Shortening the contest favors him, not her.

I would have thought that was obvious.

Forgive me, I'm new.

Totally off topic, briefly. My employee just told me he needs to leave early so he can go home and pull his own tooth out. He's done it before... We need to win this Fall folks. We need to win for the vast underclass toiling in low expectation jobs.

Now back to topic. Has anyone brought up this idea? Hillary, pretty much mathematically eliminated even with the Wright debacle, which has cost him but so far not fatally, is compromising Obama so to force her way into the VP seat?

Sounds absurd I know, but please consider how she attacks him while bolstering McCain, creating a situation only she will be able to rectify. Only Clinton can answer the inevitable McCain ads quoting Clinton.

This would answer why she wants a revote. She protests that Obama wants to disenfranchise Florida and Michigan. But if she's on the ticket in the Fall, well then their votes counted right?

I swear to God sometimes I just do not understand the thinking of some people. For some, one drop of the ink of Partisanship taints the well of Reason.

No one--kefa, Thinkingman, anyone here--can rationally and reasonably explain to me why Michigan should have a primary "do-over" when (1) Clinton's own supporters in Michigan pushed for an earlier primary that defied DNC rules, (2) Clinton's own campaign representatives agreed and voted to strip Michigan of ALL delegates because of the State's violation of the Rules, and (3) Clinton herself admitted--long before her candidacy decided it needed Michigan--that the contest would not mean anything.

The candidates--including Clinton--agreed to neither campaign nor participate in States that violated the rules, including Michigan.

Once that pledge was signed and the delegates stripped, Obama and other candidates agreed to remove their names from the ballots to make officials of Iowa and New Hampshire happy, and altogether unsurprising move given the fact (1) that the election in Michigan would not count, and (2) the elections in Iowa and New Hampshire would. There was no harm or mischievous intent in removing a candidate's name form a ballot that would be cast in an election that did not count.

It is simple, plain as day, and easy as pie. Rules were established; the candidates, including Clinton, agreed to them; the candidates, including Clinton, agreed to stripping Michigan of their delegates; and the candidates, including Clinton, stood up and said, months ago, "this election does not count."

Suddenly, however, the perfectly linear logic of why Michigan's delegates will not be seated (and thus why the votes of primary voters who did bother to vote do not count) is being tossed out the window on the basis of frankly bizarre arguments.

The Clinton campaign argues as if the rules were noever approved by them, and never agreed to by them. If they were an opposing party in a breach of contract case, I would move for summary judgment, and win, very early in the case.

So to argue that the Rules are somehow not the Rules is an extraordinary perversion of logic and fact.

Add to that cries of "disenfranchisement" of voters, none of whom have a right under the Constitution to vote in a party's primary process, and logical perversion leaps right through the looking glass into La La Land.

Imagine if Bush had applied the same arguments to Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004. Democrats of all stripes would be livid at Bush's failure to play by the Rules.

And yet, when it benefits a particular candidate--in this case Clinton--those same weirdo arguments are advanced and somehow credited by ssome quarters as being serious.

More than anything, this whole Michigan and Florida do-over argument from the Clinton camp makes me wonder exactly what other Rules would be bent or ignored by a Clinton administration when it suits that administration's purpose.

We've had enough rule-bending and game-changing for the last seven years on everything from habeas corpus to the right to confront an accuser, to simple principles of checks-and-balances.

If she will make this kind of warped argument in order to win a State election even when that election will likely have little impact (and show how committed she is to this strange argument by taking the time to demand a revote from a lectern in Detroit!), well, what principle is too sacred not to bend?

I've seen the answer to that question repeated too often by another similarly flexible fellow over the last seven years, thank you very much.

The last thing I need is more of the same.

"No one--kefa, Thinkingman, anyone here--can rationally and reasonably explain to me why Michigan should have a primary "do-over" when (1) Clinton's own supporters in Michigan pushed for an earlier primary that defied DNC rules, (2) Clinton's own campaign representatives agreed and voted to strip Michigan of ALL delegates because of the State's violation of the Rules, and (3) Clinton herself admitted--long before her candidacy decided it needed Michigan--that the contest would not mean anything."

Exactly. She cheated, she got her friends to rig the calendar. Cheaters shouldn't win.