However could this change of heart possibly have happened?

Obama says give Fla. and Mich. delegates full vote

WASHINGTON - Now that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president, he wants convention delegates from Florida and Michigan to have full voting rights at the party’s national convention.

Obama sent a letter Sunday to the party’s credentials committee, asking members to reinstate the delegates’ voting rights when the committee meets at the start of the convention in Denver.

Two things. First: ah-ah-ah, AP. McCain’s the only person in this race who has clinched his nomination. I understand that the Democrats like to pretend otherwise, but until they actually have the final votes and anoint his head with the sacred oil, Obama is merely the assumed nominee. He doesn’t like it, then maybe he should have gone out and won California. Or New Jersey. Or Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Texas, or Massachusetts.

Second: this is yet another flip-flop for the fellow. As per the St Petersburg Times:

KISSIMMEE — Delving deeper into Florida’s Democratic delegate debacle than he ever has to date, Sen. Barack Obama said Wednesday that “a very reasonable solution” would be to count Florida’s disputed primary votes and cut the state’s delegation to the convention in half.

Still, in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Obama brushed off Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emphasis on counting Florida’s primary as a meaningful indication of the popular vote. She in turn called that stance an insult to 1.75-million Democrats who voted on Jan. 29.

“In all these races if I didn’t campaign at all and this had just been a referendum on name recognition, Sen. Clinton would be the nominee,” Obama told the Times during his first campaign trip to Florida in eight months. “It’s pretty hard to make an argument that somehow you winning what is essentially a name recognition contest in Florida was a good measure of electoral strength there.”

That was then. As Jake Tapper notes, this is now:

“Party unity calls for the delegates from Florida and Michigan to be able to participate fully alongside the delegates from the other states and territories,’ Obama wrote in a letter to credentials committee chairs Alexis Herman, James Roosevelt, Jr., and Eliseo Roques-Arroyo. “Accordingly, I ask that the Credentials Committee, when it meets on August 24 to approve the delegates for the National Convention, pass a resolution that would entitle each delegate from Florida and Michigan to cast a full vote.”

This naturally has nothing to do with the fact that Michigan - a state that Obama absolutely needs to win - is currently polling at +4.3 for the last month. In July. Before the race tightens. It’s merely a sign that the candidate is all about making sure that everybody gets represented at the convention.

Now that he thinks that he knows how it’s all going to turn out, of course.

Moe Lane

PS: Just for the record, I don’t feel any particular contempt towards Senator Obama for this exercise in applied political cynicism. I might, except that all my contempt reserves are unfortunately dedicated towards those of his supporters who seem to think that we must turn off our critical faculties and worship the man, merely because they have chosen to.