I don’t get it. Like Karl says, neither one of them has a rational interest in compromising; I’d go a step further and say neither one of them (but especially Obama) has an interest in holding new elections. Hillary has more of an interest, of course, since she’ll likely win and pick up delegates, but as we’ve discussed, the pick-up will be marginal and Obama’s likely to do better in the popular vote this time around now that he’s the frontrunner. The popular vote is what she cares about since it buttresses her moral case for the nomination before the superdelegates, so why give him a chance to cut into that with a re-vote (especially when the re-vote polls are grim)? Better to sit on what she’s got and go whine to the credentials committee at the convention about disenfranchisement to see if they can’t be muscled into validating the results.

And what’s Obama’s logic? The last thing he wants to do is lose two more big battleground states fair and square, even if he makes it close and claims a pyrrhic victory in having reduced her margins of victory. Granted, that would be preferable to having the credentials committee validate her earlier wins, but why not take his chances in trying to muscle them the other way? Even if they side with her, at least he’s preserved his objection that the process was illegitimate, which may weigh on superdelegates who are afraid of Hillary being nominated and jeered as “selected, not elected.” If he agrees to the re-vote and loses, even narrowly, he waives that objection.

What am I missing here?