NCS – I blame the media, it’s much more interesting and profitable for this primary to drag on as long as possible.  But if both Obama and Clinton stopped attacking each other it would leave the media with nothing to cover but their attacks on McCain.

Meanwhile, I still say that somehow both states will be seated at the convention.

And please spare me the “now there is a Republican nominee and its different, period.” Really? Where is that rule? When and if you find it, please pass it on to your Obama campaign which, due to its 3-1 spending advantage, put out more negative air time than did Clinton. You’ve truly been spending too much time in the Land of Koz. No one has clinched the Democratic nomination. There are still elections going on. Those voters are entitled to the same free spirited debate as the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. By the way, speaking of Koz, is he still waiting on the returns from the Philadelphia suburbs?

And given the disdain that some Obama supporters have for the voters in the remaining primary states its no surprise that you and others are willing to disenfranchise 1.6 million Democrats all because it won’t work out for your candidate.

I never blamed Obama and the DNC alone for the mess. Go back and read my comments. Dems in Michigan and Reps in Florida started this but the DNC applied the political death penalty to an infraction, unlike the GOP who had a more fitting punishment and got no heat for it. As for Obama, his campaign is to blame for not allowing a Michigan revote. And his campaign opposed any revote in Florida as well, although I conceded this was moot because Florida rightly felt they had a valid election. And the Democrats in Florida tried to comply with the DNC rules but did not have the votes. How kind of you and Eric to want to take 50% of the delegates for Obama when they weren’t earned. It might make sense in Michigan to do something like a 50-50 split but if the Obama folks don’t want to work this out , they can take the uncommitted and Clinton will take the 18 net delegate split. And Florida, the results were Clinton 50% and Obama 33%. That’s a net 38 delegates for Clinton that have been stolen unless they are counted.

I could care less what the candidates agreed to under duress. This is the Democratic Party and , especially after what happened to Florida in 2000, we don’t want to be the Party that disenfranchises the state again. Howard Dean in drag as Katherine Harris. Wonderful.

Bill—I didn’t forget you. I wasn’t implying what you assert. I just had not had time to check out what happened. Here it is: The Florida legislature is about 2-1 Republican and there is a Republican Governor. The Republican’s wanted to move up the Florida primary to January 29. This violated both GOP and Democratic party rules. Democrats were initially agreeable to moving it up. But after discussions with the DNC and national party leaders, the Democrats in the Legislature agreed to try and move the Florida primary to a date that the DNC would approve, in early February. They offered an amendment to do this and it was voted down on a party line vote. The primary move up was part of an omnibus election bill that contained a critical paper trail provision that the Democrats in Florida had been fighting for since the 2000 election. The Republicans said that the paper trail provision and the early primary were linked with everything else. The Democrats could not block this nor would they want to block the paper trail provision which was understandably crucial to them. So they voted for the bill, which did include the paper trail provision and which is now Florida law.. And for that, the DNC instituted the death penalty. Even after the Republican Governor signed the bill, the DNC initially said that only 50% of the pledged delegates would be striken and all of the superdelegates. Somewhere along the line Herr Dean decided to double the penalty. What a guy.