Iceberg, dead ahead!

What a dangerous weekend ahead for the Democratic National Committee.

The Rules Committee meets on Saturday to go over proposed solutions to the denial of seating delegations for Florida and Michigan. Boy, two states the party needs to take in order for it's nominee, whoever it might be, to have a chance to win the White House.

The committee will be made up of 40% of it's members chosen by Obama's people, 40% by Hillary's folks, and 20% from the DNC itself. If 20% of the members don't like whatever is decided, then they have the right to issue a minority report. The minority report would then have to be considered by the convention committee right as the convention is starting. What does this all mean?

It means that the convention could begin with either some, or none, of the state delegations from those two important states still not seated and ready to vote.

Meanwhile, a poll by the highly respected Pew Center shows Obama's approval rating with white women taking a nose-dive since February. At that time, his approval rating was 56 positive, 36 negative. Today, it's 43 positive, 49 negative. That's not good...especially in places like...well...Florida and Michigan!

What should the Obama people do? They should agree to seat both delegations and expect that the superdelegates will continue to come Obama's way. That way the two states will feel they got a fair deal and can fully support Obama this November.

If the Democrats don't do this, it will play to all the "what happened to 'every vote should count" calls from the Clinton supporters. Obama can't afford to give away so many Clinton supporters this fall. Polls already show McCain ahead in Michigan right now.

We will see what kind of confidence Obama and his people have in the superdelegates by how they play things this weekend.

Know this...even if the committee ends up recommending only a partial seating of delegates, this would almost guarantee that the Michigan and Florida delegation issues would be quite alive when the delegates show up in Denver this August.

Bad idea.

Coach