Florida and Michigan
You won't be surprised to know that I am foolishly keeping an eye on the CSpan coverage of the DNC Rules Committee hearing. Having watched some of it so far, I would just as soon they kept it closed and decided in private, if only to spare the country from clips of this debacle. The lack of vision and perspective on display is pretty stunning, a meeting of 2 interests - one that is willing to alter the rules at the last minute to achieve political unity now that certain victory is at hand, and the other, trying to exploit that willingness by insisting on a complete 180-degree suspension of those rules inside their own delusional belief that somehow the contest is still undetermined.

Clearly, in retrospect, if we had known that Senator Clinton was going to demonize her own party's rule and become a demagogue on the issue, the sanction should have been 50-percent of the delegates, relegating both to small state status, inviting and allowing candidates to campaign there and giving no incentive for any of them to remove their names from the ballot in Michigan (the only one of the 2 in which they were *even allowed* to remove it.) But now here we are with the Rules Committee agreeing to consider removing the sanction that was placed *for good reason*. It is a truly spineless act that goes against all of the standard cliches about playing the game by the rules, not changing them mid-stream, etc. Obama is willing to entertain it so as not to jeopardize November. Clinton, holding the threat of November over his head, is pursuing it because of her quixotic quest for August.

Here's my take, for what it's worth (not much). The Rules Committee, first, should not have even entertained this request, and should have stuck to its guns awarding zero delegates to FL and MI, not because that's necessarily the fairest and smartest punishment, but because those are the rules that were set out for everyone at the beginning. Force Senator Clinton, if she must, to take a fight to the Credentials Committee in August, and hope that by then the math renders that option pointless.

Second, if they are going to seat the delegations they have to at least sanction them by 50% - giving each delegate a half vote - making the rule at least mean something. If there is no sanction, how the hell will they ever, ever hold another state to the rules in the future?

But lastly, if they are going to award the half-vote delegations from both states, they have to base the allocation on the vote that has taken place. This Michigan plan to allocate delegates based on anything else - which I have been behind in the past - I have come to see as nonsense. Senator Obama made a tactical decision to remove his name from the ballot - a mistake it would seem without getting the assurance from Clinton that she would do the same. He's free to go after the uncommitted delegates (there would be 55 to Clinton's 73) and there would be lots of them that he should win.

I don't think you can have it both ways. So long as the nomination is still being contested, either don't award delegates to FL or MI as punishment for going out of turn, or award them based on the vote that has taken place - as seriously flawed as it was in Michigan - and tell those who didn't bother to vote, or who decided to vote in the Republican primary or wrote in Obama or Edwards that you didn't mean it when you voted as a committee earlier to render those 2 primaries inconsequential.

The other way which makes some sense is to award the votes 50-50 to keep from giving an advantage to one candidate or another, keeping those primaries meaningless, but allowing representatives from the state to be on the floor. But nobody sounds like they are anxious to go for that plan.

Finally, why is anyone allowed to remain on the Rules Committee who is also a campaign adviser to one of the candidates? Why is there no pressure on Harold Ickes (or anyone else working on a campaign while sitting on the Committee) to recuse himself from this process? All of these obvious conflicts of interest just make this whole event a circus, and give all the appearance of a sham.