DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee and the rules controversy

This gets to the bottom of it. (From Kagro X at KOS, seen at The Left Coaster).

Now, everybody knows that a substantial portion of the people who came out to vote for "uncommitted" in Michigan did so because they really wanted to vote for Obama, but he wasn't on the ballot (which was his own doing, whatever you may think of his motivations for doing it). But the bottom line is that the consequence of that withdrawal is that the only facts that can be definitively stated about those votes is that they were for "uncommitted." They could mean this. They could mean that. But they do mean "uncommitted."

Or at least they did, until they were sprinkled with magic pixie dust over lunch this afternoon. Because when the RBC came back, they were magically transformed into votes that said, "Yes, we said 'uncommitted,' but we really meant 'Barack Obama.'"

And maybe that was even true. The point, though, is that the RBC had no mechanism under the rules by which they are entitled to make that decision. No mechanism, that is, except one: the prerogative of the rules committee to say -- provided it can muster the votes for it -- that the rules can go jump in the lake.

And that's what they did today.