Many a football team gains more yards than its opponent in a game yet loses on that important technicality called points.

The stupidity of punishing two states like Florida and Michigan is appalling.

That said, the rules also call for the Super Delegates to be able to vote their conscience and pick a candidate.  This is to avoid McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis type losses.  

At this point neither candidate has earned any nomination of any kind, and neither will have earned it until the Super D's clinch the deal.

The nomination cannot be 'taken away' from Obama because he does not have the nomination. He will not have earned it until at least June 3.  It can only be given to him, as well as it could only be given to her. He may be ahead in delegates, but (imo) she will be ahead in popular votes when this is over.

Should the Super D's award to either, there will be a backlash among the hardcore for either candidate.  Will blacks be forgiving?  Will women be forgiving? (most pundits don't even go there - but they should.)

The Democrats have decided that the nominee will be determined by the number of delegates won, not by the popular vote

That is a true statement, but SDs are a part of that 'number of delegates won'. They can decide based on popular vote, electability, loyalty, someone bringing crowds to their own rallies, spite, or whatever else enters their brains.

A sizeable portion of Dems reject the MI and FL punishments, no matter what the DNC says about the rooolz, and see 2214 number as the magic number.  

I also believe that the time for a "unity" ticket is long past. For many supporters of either candidate they loathe the other Democrat more than McCain.

you really think the supers let her fight to the convention to seat Florida and MI, if Obama already hits 2,024 at the end of the primaries?

There are no rules for what the 'super' delegates should/must consider at all.

The talk about 'changing the rules' just seems to be coming from Obama surrogates as that is his campaign's eminent talking point.

In reference to MI and FL can you please tell me what terrible thing occurred because MI and FL went against the DNC rules not to move up their primaries?  The only negative thing that I saw that occurred was nothing more than a record number  of voters in each of those states who came out to vote.

I understand that rules are important but don't you think it was a silly rule now that you look back at it.   Nothing terrible happened because they disobeyed the rules.  Look at all the states that vote at the same time on Supertuesday.  So two states wanted to move their primary up.  So what.

I also understand that FL had no choice in their primary dates since the FL republican legislature and the republican Governor ordered the primary to be held in Jan.  The FL democrats wanted it in Feb.  To me it was not their fault.

I also have heard that three other states moved up their primaries but they were not penalized.  I do not know which states exactly but the point is why the double standard. Why weren't they penalized?

If I am not mistaken you did not ask permission of the participating candidates in MI and FL if it was ok if the DNC was not going to approve the move up of their primaries and that the DNC would punish them if they did.  My point is why do you now have to ask permission of the candidates if its ok to have a re vote. One side will always tell you no and the other side yes. You can't leave this choice up to the candidates.  Just like you ruled on the rules that FL, MI and other states could not move up their primaries with that same authority you could say they need to have a re vote and those are the rules.

I think it is more of a pride thing with the DNC.  They could admit that it was a silly rule and reverse the ruling but the DNC has to swallow their pride  to do this.   It takes courage to admit mistakes and to swallow your pride I know but I have done it on several occasions.

If the DNC wants to be adamant and refused to retract their ruling ,then I feel that the fairest way to include MI and FL in the nomination process is to have a re vote. If no re vote occurs then only other way would be to leave FL on the original vote count since all the candidates had an even playing field.  None of them campaigned in FL and all of them were on the ballot.  All the voters knew who they were.  No one had an advantage.  In MI there were three candidates, Hilary, Dodd and Kucinich.  The other candidates took their names off the ballot.  MI was not telling them that they had to do that they did that on their own volition.  In MI I say let the 55% of the Hilary vote go to her and the 40% of the uncommitted go to Obama.  I think that is very generous.

Seating of the MI and FL delegates after there is a nominee is meaningless. Unless they play a role in the nomination process then you will have an illegitimate candidate.  

Thanks

They ignore the flexibilities in regard to the credentials committee's powers to seat or not seat and they seem to be happy to gloss over the prefabricated role of the superdelegates.  They are permitted to vote their minds and are not controlled by some proportionality rules or total popular vote counts, or number of elected delegates. Them's the rules suckers!  Live with them and quit your belly achin'!  

One part of politics that always fascinated me was the quiet whisper game that happens. Where you have not so obvious agents snuggling up to important people and constantly whispering things in their ears, to get them to spin your way. It's a very subtle and clever game. Funny enough, not unlike how cults get new members.

And here's today's talking point on the election, Clinton people talking about how she's ahead in the popular vote count when you include MI and FL is just crazy. Because we're not counting MI and FL and that's just crazy logic. Say it three times, crazy, crazy, crazy.

I think this is Clinton's endgame strategy.  If she can't get enough Supers to vote for her, she'll convince enough to vote for neither.

Make Obama show he can hold onto and expand his delegate base.

The press will eat this up.  And if Clinton prevails it will look like a fair fight. The stolen election meme will be gone.

All of the candidates had signed a pledge saying that they would not "campaign or participate" in the primary. Hillary herself in an interview on NPR said that our primary would not count for anything.

To use the results of our primary in any way would be grossly unfair. It's obvious that if the candidates had campaigned here and we'd had a real election the results would have been totally different.

For Hillary to now suggest that it would be fair to count the votes that were cast is ludicrous. We did not have a fair election. It's obvious that she changed her tune after the early primaries did not go as she expected.

The nomination should come from the pledged delegates and the super delegates. If Hillary wants the super delegates to take the popular votes into account in making their decision, that's fine. Just don't included the results of our flawed primary.