I'll tell you what. If my neighborhood association tells me that there's an informal gathering on Thursday night to "vote" on issues but this vote won't count, because the official votes are always held on Friday morning, and I show up on Friday morning to vote but they tell me that they ratified the results of Thursday night's vote instead.... well, being lied to and left out of the process doesn't sit to well with some people.

And if, in typical fashion, the DNC makes the boneheaded move of seating the delegates of Florida and Michigan based on the results of a faulty process whereby many voters who were told the votes DO NOT COUNT would be disenfranchised by counting the unofficial votes as an official record of the will of the people when it clearly is not, I would not be surprised to turn on CNN and find that both Florida and Michigan have been set on fire by an unruly mob of pissed off protestors.

Help me out here, doloresflower, because with one simple answer you can clarify this.

When you say black people were told not to vote what is missing is this explanation: ________________ told black people not to vote. See, all that is necessary is a subject which would answer the question of "who?" The verb would be "told" and the object would be black people. Otherwise, we have a non-event. Plenty of people did turn out and vote. Apparently they were not told or else they were told and chose to disregard the information.

The subject of your sentence deserves more than one simple answer. It deserves several because it fully depends on where people go for information. The information that people's vote in Florida would not count was available and given out handily by:

Democratic party officials

newspaper and magazine articles

friends and neighbors

the internet

etc. etc.

Even here on Salon people could have found out that for violating party rules the Democratic voters in Florida and Michigan wouldn't be able to participate in the primary election process.

I hope that you aren't arguing that people who are literate and turned to one of these many otherwise reliable sources now are involved in a "non-event."

You also don't mention the fact that many have mentioned here about a property ballot that might have brought out more people to vote than normally would have in an election that wasn't supposed to change the outcome. No one realized how important participating in the primary process would be this would be early on.

I understand the argument against a do-over from a financial point of view...it's expensive, but from a "fairness" perspective, I can't understand why it wouldn't be "fairer than fair." (Except that it would reward the party officials who decided to move up the date...but I'll leave that alone for now). If a do-over declared Clinton a winner and she has claimed that this is her strength in winning the big states...Why would Hillary supporters be against a do-over? I guess I find this difficult to understand. It makes me think that you are not fully confident of her ability to win in a level playing field.

Brilliant!!!!! Everyone reading this enormous chain of letters, please go back two pages and read peeps' incredibly insightful analysis. It's without a doubt the truest thing on this thread (and this is like my 4th post to it).

To recap briefly: this is a fight between the DNC and the DLC, with the latter upset at how the 50 state strategy of the former has completely usurped their authority within the party, and shown them to be ineffectual leaders.

Nice work, peeps, I'm serious. That's better analysis than Walsh, Koppelman or Madden have had in a month.

YES. Notice I say "YES" to being allowed to vote. The "vote" that occurred earlier was really a "non-vote". It was a fake vote. There was no vote. It counted for nothing. There was no vote ---in accordance with the intent of our constitution.

Our national constitution says they have a right to vote and have their voices be heard and be counted, and so do the respective state constitutions of both Florida and Michigan. The fact that the individual state democratic party committees of both states made decisions not in accordance with the national democratic committee is something that the individual voters never agreed to nor voted upon. These state committees can't deprive their own party members from voting and having a "say". They can't do that. That's it.

So let's schedule those democratic party primary elections in Florida and Michigan, and let's do it right away....or "someone" or some group is forcing unconstitutional behavior on the registered democratic party voters in these two states..... and excuse me please.... but now we're talking.... bring out the lawyers. Thank you. That's all we need is more work for the lawyers, but I see that as a high possibility.

Huffpo is reporting Obama's 50 superdelegates are confirmed:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/05/confirmed-obama-has-50-s_n_90159.html

Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO), Sen. Barack Obama's Missouri co-chairman and pledged Obama superdelegate, said Obama will gain the support of 50 undecided Democratic superdelegates later this week, according to the Columbia Missourian.

Said Clay: "She (Sen. Clinton) will not make up those numbers. This race is over."

Someone tell the fat lady to start warming up.

Hillary Clinton is as slick as Willie!! She was the only one on the ballot in Michigan and now she wants "her" delegates seated!! Will she change the rules when it suits her if she is elected President? She cannot have it both ways. Michigan and Florida violated the rules and they should have to abide by them. Hillary knew the rules and she has to abide by them. Will she do as President Bush has done? He does as he pleases and we pay the price.

You have destroyed this site.

It's got nothing to do with this post, or anything in today's commentary... It's just that for the past several months, the writer who once drew me here have left. Whenever I have a notion to read anything you've read it seems as though I'm watching a idiot preen on about some bickerfest they've recently been on, or going to be on. It seems this has been your focus since you've taken over from the founder, and it must have worked as you aren't having the money problems they once had...

But still, you've killed something good and that's a shame.