Wayne Barrett says it all at HuffPost....

Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean came out of hiding last week to announce that there is no reason to rush to resolve the fate of Florida and Michigan. He said he was confident that these delegations, disqualified in 2007 by Dean's own Rules Committee, would be seated at the August convention -- but, apparently, only after a nominee is chosen, which he predicted would occur by July 1. This modern-day Metternich, whose two-fisted handling of this two-state controversy has already had more impact on the 2008 race than his candidacy did on the race in 2004, is promising to mediate the dispute once it's already settled.

The Dean plan is that these two swing states -- big enough to decide the nomination or general election -- will eventually be granted "virtual" seats at the convention because, as Dean imaginatively put it in an AP interview, "the campaigns believe that kind of deal is premature right now." Since one campaign (Hillary Clinton's) was amenable to redoes, even financing Michigan's, and the other campaign (Barack Obama's) opposed every feasible proposition, it is, in a strange way, true that the two sides weren't collectively ready for a deal.

In all the buzz about the media's pro-Obama tilt, its indifference to his resistance to including these states in the "actual" nominating process is its most disturbing favor, especially since this brand of "conventional politics," as Obama would put it, flies in the face of his contention that "the people" should pick the nominee. Obama's only proposal so far has been to split the delegates evenly, just like he and Michelle parcel out Christmas presents to their two daughters.

Of course, the column inches and moments of air time spent on how and why these two states and their 366 delegates have been banished adds up to less than the attention devoted to, say, the Wyoming caucus, where a 2,066-vote Obama margin gave him a big enough delegate boost to virtually cancel out Hillary Clinton's 329,000-vote margin in the five March races.

The body count that the mainstream media has regurgitated out of Florida and Michigan is that 2.3 million Democrats voted in primaries that broke the rules, leaving the DNC with no choice but to level both villages, even if the collateral damage might include the party's prospects of carrying those disenfranchised states in November. The DNC and the MSM appear to have simultaneously concluded that even Clinton's 300,000-vote win in Florida, where both candidates competed on a level playing field, shouldn't be counted in the popular vote tally, a calculation that appears nowhere in DNC rules and turns 1.7 million Democratic voters into ghosts.

The irony is that the drumbeat for Clinton's withdrawal -- coming on the heels of her recent wins and right before what may be her biggest in Pennsylvania -- is rooted in the collapse of the effort to redo Michigan and Florida. The theory is that she should quit because there is no way she can win, and that there is no way she can win because two states she could win, at least one of which she actually did win, will not be counted until she gets out. Barack Obama would thus become the nominee -- not because of an honestly earned if precariously narrow lead in the final national vote, but because of two elections he would not let happen.

If that sounds like a curious way to end a nominating contest that 30 million to 33 million voters will participate in before it's done, even stranger is that the DNC is following only some of its rules -- and that the real culprits who caused this debacle are Republicans, who are now relishing the catfight they provoked.

And, about those Republicans......you'll have to read the whole thing.

As Anglachel states.....

......A party in power must have legitimacy in the eyes of the voters if it is to act. In order to perform its role, the party must achieve sustained electoral success over time and across geographic regions. It must be able to speak credibly as being authorized by the majority of citizens to enact policies, promote programs, draw up legislation, staff bureaucracies, and utilize public funds in ways that a significant minority of the population does not like. Legitimacy, and thus the authority to take action in the name of the public, must have formal grounds (all procedures have been followed) but it requires something more and somewhat ephemeral - the perception that the procedures were performed correctly and that the outcome is valid. While office can be taken on purely formal grounds, the lack of a consensus that the procedures are valid will obviate legitimacy.

In the current Democratic primary, the campaign fails on both formal and perceptual grounds. The exclusion of Michigan and Florida votes from the candidate vote counts is not legitimate because the rules allow remedies, including revotes, and because one candidate will not participate in attempts to remedy the situation. Thus, growing numbers of voters, particularly those in the disenfranchised states, are protesting that they will not accept as legitimate any nomination that excludes these states' votes.

Whether you support Hillary or Obama, the legitimacy of the Democratic presidential nominee as such is in grave danger:

snip

It is by no means certain that even if Hillary could secure the votes of Florida and Michigan and do so with their current vote distribution she would win the nomination. It is certain that Obama's nomination will be rejected as illegitimate unless he accepts the judgment of Florida and Michigan voters on whether he should be the nominee. To repeat, at this point neither of them can be a legitimate nominee on super delegate votes alone.

Arguing the rules does you no good in the general election if the outcome of adherence to those rules is rejection by the voters.

Updated - In response to CognitiveDissonance in the comments - Even if Hillary drops out, Obama has not met the conditions for legitimacy. When he refused to agree to a revote which would have remedied the situation, that is when he put himself in opposition to the voters of those states. If he "wins" the nomination by forcing her out before those states are counted, he loses the general. In short, Obama has dealt himself a nearly unwinnable hand. At the same time, the only winning strategy for Hillary is to pursue a revote and to decisively win them by at least the margin she won the first time around.

In short......a Party that wins by not counting all the votes has no legitimacy......period....full stop.

Contrary to what Obama, Dean and Brazile seem to believe.....we "wimmin" aren't just going to come back meekly into the fold if this nomination is stolen.

The stolen election of 2000 started a whole movement. The Party Elite had better keep this in mind whilst searching for a solution to the MI/FL conundrum.