Why 69-59?

So one of the obvious question is: where did the 69-59 split come from? And when Harold Ickes yowls about 4 hijacked delegates, what is he talking about?

The short answer is that Ickes is full of it. Obama's name was not on the ballot and nobody outside of Clinton's world think the election in January was serious. As debrazza notes in the comments:

"uncommitted" was not "uncommitted" because the Mich. Dem. Party itself was telling people to vote "uncommitted" to express their preference for Obama, Edwards and Richardson...[and] the Clinton position was that the all the votes should could and all of the voter preferences were valid, except for the 30,000 write in ballots who expressed a preference for Obama (or at least everyone believes they did).

Today's decision by the RBC is the first time that the DNC has accepted a Michigan delegate selection plan. There never was any other plan, so no delegates could have been hijacked.

The 69-59 itself was a compromise between a proposal by the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign. Essentially, the RBC split the difference between each campaign's proposal, giving Clinton a slight advantage.

A longer explanation follows.

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Let's start by looking at this from Ickes' perspective. (I'm being specific here because Clinton supporters like Don Fowler disagree with Ickes.)

Ickes says the primary election on January 15 was a valid reflection of Michigander preferences even though neither Barack Obama nor John Edwards were on the ballot. Ickes says that based on the vote, 73 of Michigan's delegates should have been allocated for Clinton and that 55 should have been allocated for "Uncommitted." Moreover, he says that the 55 "uncommitted" delegates should be truly uncommitted, equally open to support Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

The idea that the "uncommitted" vote was truly uncommited is absured; based on exit poll data, it was almost entirely a vote for either Barack Obama or John Edwards (with a few more for Bill Richardson). Moreover, decent chunk of Clinton's supporters said they would have voted for Obama had he been on the ballot (and some would have chosen Edwards as well).

Moreover, there were 30,000 write-in ballots, most of whom likely went for Obama, but since he didn't put his name on the ballot, the write-in ballots could not be counted. So they were literally tossed aside.

Unlike the Clinton campaign, the Obama campaign took the position that the election had no meaning because he was not on the ballot. He therefore proposed a 64-64 split.

So Clinton supported a 73-55 split, and Obama supported a 64-64 split. The Michigan Democratic Party essentially split the difference. For the Clinton proposal, this meant her total dropped by 4, from 73 to 69, and his increased by 4, from 55 to 59. For the Obama proposal, it meant that her total increased by 5 and his total dropped by five.

Another way of thinking about it: Clinton proposed she net 18 delegates from Michigan. Obama proposed a split. The RBC decided she would net 10, a compromise slightly tilted in her favor.

Ickes calls this a hijacking, but that's baloney, because the primary was never sanctioned; there never was a 73-55 split that the DNC had approved. Today was the first day that the DNC approved any delegates whatsoever for Michigan.

He'd be accurate if he said: you took 4 delegates away from our proposal, which was based on the primary. But saying they were hijacked was unnecessry hyperbole.

As Senator Levin said, this was a flawed primary. The Michigan Democratic Party recognized this and came together and united behind a 69-59 split. They felt this unified the party and prepared them to win the state in November.

Both campaigns opposed the Michigan Democratic Party's plan, but the Obama campaign was clearly open to accepting it, and has accepted it. Clinton on the other hand is rejecting the local party's decision and the national party's decision. The obvious reason: it's not in her interest.

Obama is on much stronger ground here. Ickes is using tough rhetoric...but he just doesn't have a good case.

That's why Clinton lost 5 of her 13 supporters on this vote. I highly doubt she'll push this case heavily; Obama is a much stronger position than she is. Indeed, if she pushed it too hard, she'll end up making a fool of herself: who would want to be known as the candidate who insisted an election that didn't have her key opponents on the ballot was valid?