Ickes: Uncommitted Delegates Must Stay Uncommitted
The Hillary campaign has taken a great deal of heat for their demand that Hillary be awarded all her delegates in Michigan and that none of the so-called "uncommitted" delegates go to Obama.
On a conference call with reporters this afternoon laying the groundwork for tomorrow's DNC meeting about the delegations, top Hillary adviser Harold Ickes extensively rebutted that criticism, pointing out that in addition to Obama, John Edwards and Joe Biden also weren't on the ballot (only Hillary was).
"It's impossible to discern what was going on in the minds of the uncommitted [voters]," Ickes said. "Some may have voted for Senator Obama. Some may have voted for Senator Biden. And some may have been voting for just plain 'uncommitted.'"
"The Rules and Bylaws Committee does not have the jurisdiction or the power to take uncommitted delegates," Ickes continued, "and award them to Senator Obama, or any other presidential candidate, any more than it has the power to take uncommitted delegates that were awarded to Hillary Clinton and give them to another candidate."
This is a pretty striking conclusion. If this committee lacks the power to award the uncommitteds to anyone, as Ickes said, it's hard to see why Hillary supporter Lanny Davis proposed a solution that would have split the uncommitteds between Hillary and Obama.
What's more, if this is true, how can the Committee craft any compromise solution? How can it split the whole delegation 50-50, or by any other percentage, between the two candidates? Wouldn't that involve doing what Ickes says the Committee lacks the power to do -- that is, award the uncommitteds to a candidate?
This legal reading seems designed to make the case that the only legal solution that the Committee has at its disposal is the Hillary solution. Maybe I'm missing something here.
Late Update: Ickes' position is apparently not that these delegates never go to a candidate. It's that the Committee can't pick which candidate they go to -- at the Convention, the uncommitteds can support whomever they wish. Of course, under this scenario, they wouldn't count in Obama's column in the short term, while hers would count.
Late Update: Here's the audio from the call:
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