Anyone else note the irony or yet another FL mess up affecting the DNC?

There's nothing that can be done now. It's over. The DNC made this happen as leadership knew full well votes would not count in the nomination process when they decided to punished Michigan and Florida.

What I don't get is the lack of outrage over Hillary suggesting the DNC simply reverse itself and count the two state's votes/delegates. Especially after she broke her word and campaigned there and was the only one on the balot in Michigan. That's got to be nearly an all time whopper for gaul.

I think that Obama in fact spent some campaign money in Florida; for what exactly, I don't know. I could almost understand the DNC deciding to split the delegates there according to the vote. For Michigan, where Clinton was the only one on the ballot, this scheme would be nonsensical.

By the way, there seems to be an increasing likelihood that on the night of March 4th, we'll be hearing the spinmeisters and pundits telling us that the election in Texas doesn't really count, either.

Maybe some wise people can come up with a solution--apparently we were close to this sort of a "train wreck" before the 1988 convention when Jesse Jackson was saying the rules weren't quite fair or something.

One solution suggested was that the Florida and Michigan delegates be made proportional to the national vote or something.

But here is the problem. Suppose Florida is told they can have 50 delegates or whatever. How will they be chosen? Will Connie and Juan and Bill and Sue and all the others campaign for delegate by saying "vote for me because I am the strongest candidate" or "vote for me because we need experienced delegates and I've been a delegate before"?

Will there be debates about panhandle Democrats vs. Miami Democrats? Same with Detroit Democrats vs. Grand Rapids (President Ford's old home area) vs. Upper Peninsula Democrats. The individuals chosen as the actual delegates do matter, because conventions can make rules changes as well as debating platform planks.

I agree with Steve's

"These meetings are open, interested people can go, but what we find is that all of these meetings that later turn out to be important are generally ignored. It is a general failing of human nature that we ignore the rules and don’t put any effort into understanding them or even vaguely caring about them until we don’t like them in practice."

In the time between 1984 and 1988, there was a major revision of the rules besides the hearings of the Fairness Comm. When the State Rules Comm. met to discuss these delegate selection rules, the people at the meetings were basically Rules Comm. members and former delegates--no one else understood the subject (or cared?).

On the national level, there was a fight about one particular paragraph of the rules. It was a paragraph Jimmy Carter had used in 1976 and some people had been arguing about it ever since.

Those who knew the process knew one of our Oregon DNC members was very much involved in these issues as a member of the delegate selection convention---it had been announced at party meetings that our guy had been chosen for the Fairness Comm. Anyone attending meetings or dinners or whatever could approach the DNC member and talk about these debates--he seemed eager for the discussion, as if not many people understood or cared about these issues. Whenever I talked with him, I made clear why I believed the paragraph should stay in the rules.

The DNC finalized the 1988 delegate selection rules and our DNC member reported the decision to the State Central Comm. Some of the central comm. members went ballistic. I hadn't seen them talking to our DNC member and I wondered why they hadn't expressed that anger when it would have done some good.

As the debate wore on (a resolution to condemn the changes), the DNC member told me that the decision at the national level was final and no state could change the rules at that point (early 1988, as I recall).

One more thing, Wayne--I recall the 1968 Oregon primary when a friend who had been born in Mass. looked at the TV screen (we were in college in Calif.) and was amazed that a Kennedy had been beaten by Eugene McCarthy. We supported McCarthy and would later see in person at the local airport in California.

But I don't agree with you about "first time in 40 years". Almost a quarter of a century ago, the Oregon presidential primary mattered, for a number of reasons. Not the least of which was the number of first time volunteers who got involved, and the number of people who were either elected Hart delegates for the national convention, or who took part in the delegate selection process incl. the district and state conventions.

Those people became active in the Oregon Democratic Party and changed the direction of that party for several years afterwards.

I've been arguing vigorously against any attempt to retroactively revise the rules to seat Michigan and Florida. I don't think the party should do that, especially if it could alter the outcome of the nomination.

That said, we do have a problem. Something like 1.5 million Florida Dems (can anyone verify that number?) came out to vote -- which is somewhat shocking given that everyone knew the votes wouldn't count. Obviously, those voters did think they would count -- or at least that they should. These are people we absolutely need in the general, every last one of them. Same with Michigan.

So this is a real problem not for Obama or Clinton, but for the Democratic party in the general election. I see no good solutions, and it worries me.

Reinforcing my point, I just saw this Rasmussen poll from Florida.

This is a nightmare for the party. Obama is significantly behind McCain in Florida compared to Clinton, unlike the results from almost every other state. The hypothesis is that Florida Dems, particularly women and the elderly, are angry at Obama for arguing that they shouldn't have a voice at the convention.

So the bad behavior of Florida Dems by moving up their primary, coupled with the game of chicken played by the national Dems ("We won't seat your delegates. We really mean it!"), coupled with Hillary Clinton's exploitation of the issue for her own advantage, is hurting the party's chances of winning in November.

Sad. And scary.

The Florida Republican legislature set the January date. Like Jame's Thurber said, "you can look it up" I voted in Florida on the only date I could. A primary with a nearly 2 million people voting is real democracy. What would a caucus in Florida have 50,000 people? Oh well, there's always Nadar.