After yesterday's Florida-Michigan deal, Hillary strategist Harold Ickes said "we reserve the right" to take the delegate fight to the convention. I just don't see it happening. The costs to her image so clearly outweigh the gains at this point, which is probably why Howard Wolfson is telling the Times that “[o]ur focus is on securing the nomination for ourselves in the near term... I don’t think anybody is looking toward the convention to end this process.” (He did say on TV this morning that Clinton hasn't decided what she'll do.)
Moreover, the Clintonites have really defined down their beef. Last night's statement from the campaign called the Florida deal "a victory" for Florida voters. And the campaign's complaint about Michigan hinges around a measly four extra delegates awarded to Obama that Hillary's people feel should have gone to her. Four delegates a convention fight does not make.
This all seems like much ado about nothing anyway. Yesterday's DNC feud was never going to have an impact on the nomination, it felt more like a test of power--about how much face Hillary could save, how much respect she could earn from the party machine. Indeed, that's what her candidacy's endgame seems increasingly about: Leaving on her own terms, with the greatest possible aura of strength and potency, setting the tone for her next act.
P.S. Ickes, who sat through countless hours of tedium yesterday, has proven amazingly loyal to Hillary for someone who learned via the morning newspaper in 1996 that he'd been effectively fired by her husband.
--Michael Crowley