Jeralyn is also fighting for the legitimacy of Barack Obama.

His legitimacy is still in question.  The only way to make it happen is to satisfy the question of whether or not Florida and Michigan had an impact on the process.

it means more of the same.

The DNC sanctioned Michigan and Florida in 2007.  Where was all of the outrage on behalf of the people of Michigan and Florida??  Personally, I wrote letters and emails to party officials expressing my disgust with the overly harsh sanction of stripping those states of 100% of their votes.  But the DNC stood by their decision, and so did ALL of the candidates and the rest of the state parties; no one stood up for Michigan and Florida when it counted.

So now I am to understand that after agreeing upon the rules BEFORE the primary, it's time to reassess the rules and change them??

What about the voters in Michigan who wanted John Edwards?  Who knows how the primary may have been different if he had a shot at the Michigan primary in January??  Forget about them?  What about the people who would not participate in a third-world-style "primary" with only one candidate on the ballot; a candidate who agreed that the primary in which they would have been voting would not count?  

What is being argued here is that Michigan's delegates should be seated no matter what the agreed upon rules were, or how unreliable the primary process was.  

As far as Florida, that's a shame, because a Republican legislature moved their primary up.  The problem is, no one stood up for them when it mattered; especially not the majority of people claiming to be so very concerned now.

If the agreed upon rules, which were accepted by ALL the candidates can be changed during the primary process, why have primaries at all?  Those who believe the delegate system or caucus system is unfair need to advocate for a change BEFORE the next primaries start, not during the primaries.

I am surprised you do not see those implications.

...counting their votes and awarding delegates based on their votes BEFORE the nominee is chosen.

And before you say FL Republicans pushed their date up - the vast majority of Democrats in the FL leglislature "supported" the earlier primary.

of course, we all know Harold Ickes, key Clinton advisor, voted FOR these rules in August 2007 and now he is against them since FL and MI might make a difference in the nomination.

But if we ignore the DNC rules that were constructed to satisfy IA, NH, NV and SC, then in 2012 it's a free-for-all.

But that is not the point here - the point for "2008" is FL and MI violated DNC rules knowingly and now we say "Nevermind" that is OK.

Of course if the shoes were reversed and Obama was behind and needed MI and FL to win, I am quite confident Harold Ickes would be fighting to ENFORCE the DNC rules (even as Terry McAculiff threatened Levin in 2004 when Terry was DNC chair and Levin talked of moving up MI's primary then and Terry said then MI would "watch the convention on TV".

I have zero problems with political hardball.

So Clinton needs MI and FL to count so she can use her popular vote argument with the supers. Fine.

If I'm getting the point, it means that Obama getting those 55 delegates would violate the spirit of "awarding delegates based on the vote".  On the other hand, allowing those delegates to vote for Clinton would somehow be a fair awarding of delegates based on the actual vote.  

Obama - 1669.5
Clinton - 1500.5

Count if Florida and Michigan are seated as-is.

Obama - 1728.5
Clinton - 1678.5

There are 86 remaining pledged delegates.  For Hillary to tie Obama she would need to win 75% of the remaining delegates, which is effectively impossible.  

And those numbers don't even take the 55 uncommitted delegates, which have already been selected as Obama delegates.  Or the 18 Edwards delegates which have overwhelmingly endorsed Obama.

Yes, voters and state party people tried to resolve the issue with the DNC, with no real effort from the candidates.  Once again, no candidate stood up for Michigan or Florida when it counted.  It's phony outrage from the candidates and their surrogates.  

@ pie:

Yes, Senator Dodd and Congressman Kucinich were also on the Michigan ballot.

I suppose if their presence on the Michigan ballot is fair enough for you to feel the Michigan primary was fair and gave an opportunity for full participation, we agree to disagree.

This approach reminds me of what I watched a co-counsel do two weeks ago.  The case was a complicated environmental litigation that had been going on for years over development of the wetlands at the mouth of the Los Angeles River.  

The developers and the City had won at the trial court level.  We appealed and won before the California Court of Appeal, which sent the case back to the trial court "for an order in conformance with this ruling."

The developers' attorneys submitted their proposed order and we submitted ours.  My co-counsel (representing a different set of clients) wrote the brief and did the oral argument.  At the hearing, the judge said he was inclined to sign the developers' version of the order because we had not put citations to the (voluminous) record in our brief.  We asked if we could have time to submit a supplemental brief with the proper citations to the record.  The judge said he was inclined to give us 60 days to do so.

At that point my co-counsel got up and got right in the judge's face.  Telling him that it wasn't our responsibility to put citations to the record in our brief, that it was HIS duty, as judge, to go through the 85 volumes of record and find the proper citations for his order.

He looked at her in astonishment and quietly said that she had changed his mind, that he wasn't going to give us 60 days to submit a supplemental brief and that he was just going to sign the developers' order.

We were finally able to convince the judge to give us a week to submit a supplemental brief, but it was a close call.