Would Clinton 'go nuclear'?

This would not only be a mess, but it could lead to the splintering of the Democratic Party.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/04/clinton-camp-considering_n_100051.html

Hillary Clinton's campaign has a secret weapon to build its delegate count, but her top strategists say privately that any attempt to deploy it would require a sharp (and by no means inevitable) shift in the political climate within Democratic circles by the end of this month.

With at least 50 percent of the Democratic Party's 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee committed to Clinton, her backers could -- when the committee meets at the end of this month -- try to ram through a decision to seat the disputed 210-member Florida and 156-member Michigan delegations. Such a decision would give Clinton an estimated 55 or more delegates than Obama, according to Clinton campaign operatives. The Obama campaign has declined to give an estimate.

Using the Rules and Bylaws Committee to force the seating of two pro-Hillary delegations would provoke a massive outcry from Obama forces. Such a strategy would, additionally, face at least two other major hurdles, and could only be attempted, according to sources in the Clinton camp, under specific circumstances:

Which won't be enough to delete Obama's lead.

We REALLY need to get united. I make no secret of my support for Obama. But of the situations were reversed, I'd be sending him e-mail every day asking him to concede to Hillary.

innocents be damned.

that's a scorched-earth tactic that's bound to backfire.

just curious.

the symmetry and the fact that Karl Rove controls BOTH parties, and his name sounds fake to me anyways.

:shrug:

I've read that the committee includes reps from both candidates, though I am not sure in what proportions, that there are about 150 total members, but that Dean gets to appoint 30 of them. So if Dean can appoint 30 members of the Committee, how does Hillary have a working majority?

Got anything to back up those numbers?

The Rules and Bylaws Committee stripped Florida and Michigan of their delegates, and they can unstrip them.

Hillary has 13 of 30 members of that committee in her back pocket already:

Here's the list:

Co-Chairs (both undeclared):



Declared for Obama:



Declared for Clinton:



Undeclared:



Footnotes:

But it's just conjecture. Surely, it would lead to electoral disaster, and the end of the party, at least for me.

When a democratic candidate sends out fliers accusing their primary opponent of being "anti-gun" that is the "nuclear option".

according to Junior.