I am so sick of hearing people cry that they are going to vote for McCain because of this. The Republicans imposed an almost IDENTICAL punishment on these two states. The Republicans cut the Florida and Michigan delegations in half because of the early primaries. The democrats are letting ALL of them be seated, but with half a vote. The ONLY difference is that more people are being allowed to participate with the half-vote method.

I am sick of hearing people cry that this is Florida 2000 all over again. No, it isn't. There is nothing even vaguely democratic about a process with unelected superdelegates as part of the equation. The DNC does NOT have to honor the results of ANY state primary. They could turn around and say today that the Democratic nominee is Howard Dean and would be within their rights. They are under NO obligation to include voters in their decision. The superdelegates are there partly as a safety net in case the people pick someone unacceptable. This was not about democracy.

Today was not about Hillary Clinton OR Barrack Obama. The DNC set its rules and made clear what the punishment would be for violating them. There was no outcry then. The states disregarded the warnings and broke the rules. No outcry. The DNC followed through on its punishment. Hillary had started falling behind and was making some noise. The natural appeals process FOR THE STATES, not the candidates, was for the RBC to convene today and hear the states' appeals. In the months between HRC stirred people up with false claims and silly rhetoric. So today the RBC eased its punishments. It accepted the results of the FL election, with Obama's blessing, knowing that they were fundamentally flawed and gave each delegate a half vote. They didn't take any vote away. There were none. They gave them each a half vote.

In Michigan, which Clinton herself said "wouldn't count anyway", Obama wasn't on the ballot. The Michigan state DNC used exit polls and surveys of the write-in ballots to come up with an estimate of what the results would have been if Obama had been on the ballot. As with FL, but more so, these results would surely undercount Obama's support. There were no exit polls of the people who stayed home because he wasn't on the ballot. Today the RBC heard the MI appeal and agreed to the Michagan DNC's compromise on how to split the delegates. They granted each of these delegates a half vote. Nothing was taken away, they gained half a delegation worth of votes, just like the Republicans are giving them.

No one in FL or MI LOST a vote today. They were given something that did not exist before. Today was about the party's rules and how they would be enforced. Nothing more, nothing less. The fact that the election is fairly close makes it seem like more, but this was about procedure, not candidates. Hillary should be driven out of the party for stirring up the trouble she has with knowingly false rhetoric.

And to those who still want to cry, even if both delegations had been fully seated with full votes and Obama got none from Michigan, Hillary would still be the LOSER!!! The margin would narrow, but Obama would still be on track to being the presumptive nominee by this time next week.

The only thing binding the DNC to the candidates that are running is the DNC rulebook.

They would be well within their rights to declare Howard Dean or even Dick Cheney the nominee. They are a private organization and can pick their nominee in any manner that they see fit.

Howard Dean couldn't declare himself the nominee, but the National DNC could. All they would have to do is change their own rules. They did that today. They gave 2 states that by the agreed-upon rules would not be seated full delegations with a half vote per person. There is nothing legally stopping them from throwing out the rulebook and declaring a nominee.

Guess what? They don't even have to a convention if they don't want to.

This is exactly what I meant when I said learn the basic facts. Too many Flying Monkeys™ are just repeating the Hillary talking points without even understanding the difference between legal voting rights and DNC rules.

Did you know?

Washington state has a Primary. The state government put it on the election calendar. The Washington state DNC rejected the actions of the state legislature and declared the primary non-binding. Their state delegations were decided by the DNC caucuses, not by the state primary.

I glanced through Karenn22's history myself and have to disagree with your suggestion.

She comes across as somewhat naive, believing the Hillary spin instead of finding the facts, but she also comes across as honest, at least in the early letters that I read. Hillary has gone out of her way to play the victim and cite false statistics and spew lies to stir up the passions of people who won't go the extra mile and fact check their preferred candidate. Of course she shouldn't HAVE TO, but that is politics today, especially Rovian/Clintonian politics.

There are RNC plants here in the Salon forums just to stir up trouble. locait and KateTex are two of the biggest. (One of them has over 500 posts since mid-February.) I don't think Karenn22 is one of them. I don't think she is right in many her posts, but I don't think it is malicious.