More on that Clinton call Noam mentions below: Harold Ickes argued in favor of seating the Florida delegations based on the January 29 vote there. But in response to a reporter's question, he was forced to admit that, as a DNC rules committee member last year. he had voted for stripping the state's delegates.
No one pressed him but I think Ickes would square his current position with that vote based on the two key Clnton talking points about Florida: One, that a very large number of Democrats turned out to vote and their votes should count, and two, that Obama ran a national television ad which aired in the state--a violation of the DNC's prohibition on Florida campaigning.
A key outstanding question here is just how signfiicant that ad was. How many Floridians would have seen it, and how many times? A Obama spokesman recently told me that the ad ran only on cable and thus had a minimal audience. A Clinton spokesman didn't respond to my question about this last month.
P.S. A point in Ickes's semi-defense on red states versus swing states in the general election. I believe he was responding to another reporter's question about whether Obama deserved bragging rights for having won primaries in red states like Idaho and Nebraska, which is silly. His spin may have been tenuous but he was fending off a daft question.
Bonus strained Florida talking point: On "Hardball" yesterday evening Clinton booster Hilary Rosen argued that it was not Democrats who rescheduled the Florida primary in defiance of the DNC but rather the state's Republican legislature. Not sure what actual relevance that fact holds, though I suppose it creates a handy villain for the Clintonites.
Also: Ben Smith focuses on something I thought very odd:
Ickes was asked if he would pledge not to offer superdelegates favors in exchange for their support. He professed not to understand the question, characterizing himself as "dim of wit."
It was not a hard question to understand. If Ickes didn't get the question he really was being dim. If he did, that was a very politically clumsy answer.
--Michael Crowley