The February 11 issue of the Wall Street Journal has this column by Theodore B. Olson, about an imaginary lawsuit that might conceivably come to exist this year called “Clinton v Obama”. The hypothesis concerns the now widely-discussed possibility that the Democratic presidential nomination will be so close at the Denver national convention in August, that it will all hinge on whether the party should seat delegates from Florida and Michigan.

Olson, of course, is a partisan Republican attorney who represented George W. Bush in Bush v Gore in the U.S. Supreme Court. Olson also won the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision New York State Board of Elections v Lopez Torres.

The Florida delegate count (if that state had any national convention delegates) would be Clinton 105, Obama 67. The Michigan count would be 73 Hillary, unpledged 55.

In 1984 the Democratic National Convention passed a resolution that says, “Be it further resolved that the Democratic Party of the United States recognizes the right to vote as the most fundamental of all rights in our democracy. And no duty of the Party is more important than protecting the sanctity of this right.” Notwithstanding that resolution, in 2004 the Democratic National Committee spent heavily in an attempt to prevent voters from voting for Ralph Nader, and this year the same committee feels that preserving a particular calendar of presidential primaries is more important than the voting rights of rank-and-file Democratic voters in two particular states. Thus the party leaves itself open to charges of hypocrisy. Thanks to Howard Bashman’s “How Appealing” for the link.