By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer

Posted May 29, 2008 – It looks like this weekend when the Democratic National Committee meets they’ll have to deliver a compromise that will satisfy both the Clinton and Obama campaigns and end the long-running dispute over Michigan and Florida.

The DNC Rules and Bylaws committee will meet on May 31, and it will be a tough call  to allow two states that violated party rules, by holding early primaries in January, to be given a pass and enjoy the same privileges of those states who played by the rules.

Changing the rules is one way to keep Sen. Hillary Clinton’s hopes of capturing the nomination alive.  And nobody knows; the party might fold and give her what she wants. 

What if one of the most popular American sports leagues, let’s say the NBA, decided to allow trailing teams to change the rules during the game. In basketball, under the official rules, each team gets five players; each player’s baskets earn the same number of points; and the basketball hoop is 10 feet high. 

I’ve never seen the rules change before, during or after a game.  The team, who scores the most points by shooting the ball through the basket wins.

The DNC could decide to change the rules and increase the number of delegates Obama will need from 2,026, and they appear to be preparing for that.  “Our magic number could increase kind of at the 11th hour here,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters Wednesday.

“If it’s raised a little bit based on the Rules Committee, we’ll have to go get some more super-delegates,” he added. But at some point we’re the nominee.”

There are a couple of other options for the DNC. They could seat half the delegates at the convention or seat all the delegates with half a vote.  But it still isn’t clear how those votes would be split between the two candidates.

What’s confusing is why Clinton is pushing for the Democratic National Committee to seat all 368 delegates from Florida and Michigan. It’s true she won both states, but all of the other candidates agreed not to campaign in either state and Obama wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan. 

Harold Ickes, an advisor to President Clinton, is now working for the former first lady, he’s also one of the 30 members of the DNC committee.  Ickes said, he’ll be pushing the panel to base their decisions on the January primaries. “We are urging 100 percent of the delegations be seated and that each delegate have a full vote,” Ickes said.

“We don’t think it’s fair to seat them fully because we both lived by these rules and pledged to abide by them,” Plouffe said.

It looks like it will be close to impossible to resolve this issue if they decide to forgo the rules, or change the rules.  That would never happen in basketball.