Slowly but steadily, Barack Obama’s campaign is coming around to the reality of the Florida and Michigan situation.
Until now, his approach has essentially been to bury his head in the sand in the hope that the whole matter would just go away—which is would have, had Obama finished off Hillary Clinton is Tuesday’s voting.
But with Clinton now almost certainly pressing on all the way to the convention, the status of Michigan and Florida will need to be resolved while she’s still a candidate, with re-votes likely in both states (whether through primaries or caucuses). To his own detriment, Obama has been slow to accept this reality, and his poll numbers in Florida have suffered markedly because his perceived indifference to that state’s voters. (No damage is apparent in Michigan, at least not yet.)
When asked about the subject yesterday, Obama added a new wrinkle to his customary it’s-out-of-my-hands position, saying, “I certainly want to make sure that we’ve got Michigan and Florida delegates at the convention in some fashion.” And a top Obama surrogate, Representative Adam Smith of Washington, went even further, announcing during an MSNBC appearance, “We would like to see a revote — one where both candidates actually had a chance to campaign, as opposed to the election that we had.”
