With the South Dakota primary next week, Senator Hillary Clinton made a visit to Mount Rushmore. But her campaign was dealing with news that lawyers for the Democratic Party believe, according to party rules, that "Florida and Michigan [should] lose at least half their delegate strength," which damages Clinton's hopes of overtaking Senator Barack Obama.
This weekend, the Democratic Party's rules committee will meet to discuss the fate of Florida and Michigan delegates. In order to penalize the two states for holding their primaries before February 5 (defying party rules), the Democratic Party has not seated Florida's 185 pledged delegates and 25 superdelegates and Michigan's 128 pledged delegates and 28 superdelegates.
Thought all Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign there (Obama's name wasn't on the Michigan ballot), Clinton won both primaries and now feels she should be awarded the delegates. Democrats in both states are also upset about not being represented, causing one Florida State Senator to sue for the delegates to be seated.
Clinton's camp is fighting for, per Harold Ickes, "100% of the delegations be seated and each delegate have a full vote." Obama's campaign head David Plouffe said, "Any compromise is clearly going to benefit Sen. Clinton but we're willing to seat some delegates here in the interest of bringing this to resolution"--probably because a fight during the convention would be miserable.
