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Monday, May 12, 2008 12:00 AM

Hillary enters death-with-dignity phase

If she hasn't already quit, it's hard to envision Clinton continuing her unwinnable -- even with Florida and Michigan -- battle beyond June 4.

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  • Sunday, May 11, 2008 07:41 PM

    The solution for Florida and Michigan is...

    ...blindingly obvious, and it's roughly the opposite of what the Rules Committee is said secretly to prefer.

    Seat the Florida and Michigan superdelegates and give them all the convention votes the elected delegates would have controlled. Penalize them by not allowing them additional votes as superdelegates.

    The supers are elected officials accountable to the voters. The electorate in future out-of-order primary states will understand that their states will not be denied their weighted voice by the party, but that their own elected officials will be accruing power to themselves if they choose to jump the DNC calendar.

    By the way, it is the perfect right of state legislatures to set their primary dates whenever they want. The legislators represent the people; DNC committee members are mere party apparatchiks. Legislatures may be controlled by the other party, which has an equal right to have its primary order respected. They may set rules about crossover voting which do no justice to the preferences of true Dems. With so much potential for abuse and misdirection, Dems should abandon primaries and caucuses altogether and go to an audited mail-in system to select their future standard-bearers, counting the votes of registered party members as corporations count the votes of shareholders.

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