The Note: Politics of Okey-Doke

May 29, 2008 -- Who's afraid of a little generosity?

No -- not toward Scott McClellan, who gets whacked by his old friends his old enemies, and even his old words, while just maybe peeling back the curtain on some essential truths.

This is Sen. Barack Obama's chance to be the bigger candidate -- and already he's showing a tendency to give.

Buffeted by criticism over his foreign-policy chops, with the RNC and Sen. John McCain mocking him for letting 871 days elapse between Iraq visits, Obama, D-Ill., says he may take that Iraq trip after all -- though not with McCain at his side.

A foreign trip could do him some good: "Iraq would obviously be at the top of the list of stops," Obama tells The New York Times' Jeff Zeleny.

Maybe the strategy works in the primary too: Now that it's clear that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is highly unlikely to get what she wants out of Saturday's Democratic National Committee meeting . . . why not just give it to her?

Obama's approach on Florida/Michigan -- in essence, waiting out the clock -- has already worked: Clinton can receive everything she's looking for at this late stage and it still won't make a real difference in the delegate count.

(And does anyone outside of Camp Clinton think this popular vote argument matters in the least? If it did, might it not have started working six weeks ago, or a month ago, or even now, with the superdelegates?)

"Democratic sources tell ABC News that the Rules and Bylaws Committee is not going to give Clinton the full undiluted seating of Florida and Michigan's delegations," ABC's Teddy Davis reports. "Instead, the DNC panel is likely to impose a 50 percent sanction on the two states' delegates. Under this scenario, Clinton will see a net gain in delegates (somewhere between 15 and 28 net pledged delegates for the two states combined)."

Per ABC's Jennifer Parker, "many of the panel members reached by ABC News this week agreed Clinton isn't going to get what she wants." Said committee co-chair James Roosevelt Jr.: "They'd [the Clinton campaign] have to persuade the committee that there was no violation of the rules and I haven't seen anything to support that."

Obama is up 206 delegates over Clinton -- and the supers have been moving in only one direction over the past month,per ABC's delegate scorecard. Obama is plus-63 since May 6; Clinton is plus-9 in that same time period.

Yes, Tuesday could be the night Obama goes over the top -- and changing the magic number makes that trickier. But Obama looks like he'll get to whatever number he needs (how many supers does Obama have in his back pocket?).

He can afford to be a little generous in the endgame of the nomination fight -- and it's well worth the delegate cost if that means avoiding a fractious convention.

Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa., sees it: "I'm a realist, and I think most likely the superdelegates will give Sen. Obama the votes he needs," Rendell told Bloomberg TV Wednesday. With the DNC not likely to capitulate, "I think it's very unlikely that Sen. Clinton can prevail. I think that means we're not going to field our strongest candidate."

Sen. Clinton may have been at a loss for words at Mount Rushmore, -- or, if it's the New York Post, "Mt. Crushmore."

But Bill Clinton is still working it -- and what he's planting is not going to pretty for Obama if it starts to bloom. His wife, he said, is on her way to becoming "popular choice of the Democrats" -- an argument he wants to register at Saturday's meeting, and with the uncommitted superdelegates.

Then there's the swing-state advantage -- highlighted by Camp Clinton in the final push to supers.

"Hillary Clinton's campaign tried again Wednesday to convince Democrats, especially those on the party's rules committee, that she's their strongest candidate this fall, while her rival Barack Obama talked compromise and calm," McClatchy's David Lightman reports.

From the Clinton campaign's memo to supers: "When you look at her wins in the important swing states and her strength against (presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John) McCain in head-to-head matchups, there's no question that Hillary is the strongest candidate."

Bottom line on Saturday: The party is unlikely to shut out Florida and Michigan, but it's not likely to reward them, either -- and even full capitulation to Camp Clinton wouldn't be enough, not now.

"That decision could cost Barack Obama votes, but isn't likely to swing the nomination to Hillary Clinton,"June Kronholz writes in The Wall Street Journal. "But in an indication that Sen. Clinton sees the states as pivotal to her chances, her advisers said she may be willing to take the fight to the convention floor if she fails to win all the delegates she believes she is due."

Once again, it comes down to the math -- and the DNC's own analysis reminds everyone that rule are rules, even for the Clintons: "The lawyers' analysis said that as punishment for the primaries' being held early, party rules allowed the states nothing more than that their delegations be cut in half, or that the full delegations be seated with each delegate getting only half a vote," Katharine Q. Seelye writes in The New York Times.

"As a result, Mrs. Clinton would appear to need all the more superdelegates to swing her way if she has any remaining hope for the nomination," she continues.

Key insight: "It ain't over till Hillary says it's over," Michael McAuliff writes in the New York Daily News. "She still gets to say when that is -- no matter what an obscure party committee decides this weekend about votes she needs from Florida and Michigan."

There's always the convention -- which should be Obama's biggest fear. "Party lawyers determined that full restoration, as sought by Clinton, would violate DNC rules, although it did note a loophole that would allow her to carry the challenge to the first day of the Democratic National Convention in late August," Shailagh Murray and Karl Vick write in The Washington Post.

Assuming the status quo, "Obama could pull within about 10 delegates of the 2,026 needed for the nomination, assuming he wins the South Dakota and Montana primaries as expected on Tuesday," per Murray and Vick. "The Saturday meeting is likely to increase the threshold, possibly by several dozen delegates, but campaign officials said they are confident that uncommitted superdelegates will quickly move to endorse Obama, pushing him over the finish line as early as Wednesday morning."

NPR's David Greene, who takes note of Clinton's shifting rhetoric on whether Florida and Michigan count: "The Clinton campaign's best hope is that a compromise by the party on Florida and Michigan could bolster her argument that her popular-vote wins in Michigan and Florida should count. Even if some delegates are reinstated, Clinton will remain behind Obama -- which is the math that counts."