TPM instantly posts everything that comes out of the Clinton camp no matter what it is.

Please let us know when farts next. Or you could continue talking her lies about Ireland, SCHIP, Bosnia...

I'm banging my head on my keyboard. Sen Clinton - goddamn it, please don't make this thing end up some Democratic version of Bush v Gore.

And one other comment: I remember readers being offended with the comparison of Tracy Flick and Hillary Clinton. Well, sorry, folks, but Hillary is approaching Tracydom with each passing day.

Wake up Hillary. You're now unelectable...
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/26/93119/1241/595/484508

It is too ironic that now Hillary is all concerned about Michigan. Rumor has it that one of the main reasons Michigan moved its primary up in the first place was to give Hillary an unfair advantage.

JOHN NICHOLS: You’re precisely right, Amy. You’re precisely right. And also, you should know that in Michigan there was a huge fight, as well. Organized labor in Michigan opposed a lot of the ideas for how to go ahead with an early primary, because they felt that Governor Granholm was essentially gaming the system to create an early win for Hillary Clinton. So in both states, there were debates on the ground, and there were many, many different—

AMY GOODMAN: Why would Michigan in an early primary be automatically a vote for Hillary Clinton? I mean, even with how it turned out in Michigan, though she was named and the other candidates were not, the uncommitted vote, which would have been for Obama and Edwards, was very high. I mean, I think it was—it turned out being something like fifty-five to forty, but they weren’t even named.

JOHN NICHOLS: Absolutely right. What the theory was, it was that an early primary would be advantageous for Hillary Clinton, because Michigan, being a big state, coming early on after Ohio and New Hampshire, would more likely be a place that Clinton, who—remember, these decisions were being made last year—would have a financial and name recognition advantage that would benefit her in a primary setting. So that was the theory.

What wasn’t counted on, of course, and in all of these calculations, what was not counted on was the remarkable surge of Barack Obama’s campaign, the fact that he would (a) raise as much or more money—now more money—than Hillary Clinton, and (b) become really what can only be described as a political phenomenon. So even by the time that the primary got to Michigan in mid-January, Obama was such a phenomenon that Congressman John Conyers and his wife were able to launch a campaign, essentially, a very low-budget campaign, for the undecided vote or the uncommitted vote and to get roughly 40 percent of the vote for it. Additionally, Dennis Kucinich got five percent of the vote in Michigan. So, in fact, you see 45 percent of Michiganders who went to the polls voted for somebody other than Hillary Clinton.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/7/could_michigan_and_florida_decide_the

Rake some muck TPM, enough with the copy/paste of Clinton campaign emails once they hit your inbox.

Wait, would this allow the registered Democrats who voted in the Republican primary to vote in the new Democratic primary?

(Party Leadership)... Hmmm lets seee, should we set our money on fire to please the jackass that keeps pissing on us?

I'm going to guess that they are leaning towards, no thank you.

This is actually starting to get awkward. Talk about not getting the hint yet. I think her best shot at getting this primary done would be with the backing of the RNC. Hell, they would probably offer to pay for it too.

I honestly don't see how the Democrats, whoever the nominee is, has any chance whatsoever to win in November if something is not done about Michigan. I am a Hillary supporter, loyal to the core, but I will support the Democratic nominee no matter who it is.

No Democrat can win without Michigan in November, and no Democrat will win in Michigan if there is no revote there, and in Florida. I won't even delve into what I see as the absolute foolishness of any argument that the voters of Michigan are stuck because their elected leadership violated DNC rules, or the shortsighted and utterly partisan position (that Josh and most of the left-center blogosphere and the MSM have failed to challenge for whatever reason) that this is not a case of unambiguous and blatant disenfranchisement. All I am saying is that I predict GOP landslides in Florida and Michigan if there is no revote.

Explain how this affects the candidates. According to the news article:

"U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds in Detroit ruled that the law's provision giving the list of voters' partisan preference only to the Democratic and Republican parties violated the rights of several small parties, who argued that the information should be distributed to all who wanted it or to no one.

The only immediate practical effect of the ruling was to bar the Secretary of State's office from sending the list to the parties on Wednesday, the deadline for turning it over under state law.

Edmunds, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyers who won the case and the state's top election manager all agreed that the ruling had no practical impact on the 2008 presidential campaign. "Nothing I'm going to say or do" affects the results of the Jan. 15 vote, Edmunds said. "That's the political reality."

"

obama should understand that if he is nominated with a margin that could possibly be overturned by a vote in FL and MI, like it or not, his nomination will appear tainted.

obama should move decisively to include all voters. he will look magnanimous and it will improve his standing in the party and across america.

it doesn't matter what the DNC committee decided. he has it within his power to sanction a re-vote in FL and MI. if he does sanction a re-vote and it doesn't occur, then he's done whatever he can do and he will still look unafraid of hearing the voters in those states.

if he drags his feet, then enough voters in FL and MI (not to mention disgruntled clinton supporters) may withhold just enough votes from him to throw those states to mccain.

considering that FL, MI, PA, and OH are arguably the most important swing states (based on results from 2000 and 2004), obama cannot afford to give mccain any advantage going into the GE.

he can continue to say the rules are the rules and the DNC has decided, etc, but there are huge risks inherent in that. allowing all the voters to have their voices heard is the democratic thing to do.

There is an important possible effect of today's ruling declaring the Mich priamry unconstitutional. If, against the odds, there is an do-over vote in Michigan, the Democrats will not be able to exclude anyone who voted in the GOP primary in January. They had planned to do so.

This is for 2 reasons. First, a person can't be excluded from something because of something that is Constitutionally void. Second, and more practically, if the party are running the primary, they won't even have the January voter lists, so they won't have the knowledge to know whom to exclude.

Shorter Hillary: "We challenge the Obama campaign to stop its attempts to disenfranchise Michigan voters, except for the voters who voted in the Republican primary because the Democratic primary didn't count. All other Michigan voters should have a chance to vote for pledged delegates who don't have to follow the will of the voters and can vote for whoever they want at the convention anyway."

Why would Hillary want a Michigan revote when she beleives that pledged delegates don't have to vote for the person for whom they pledged to vote?

What difference does it make?

I believe people are right when they say she just wants to prolong the primary.

Why is it that everyone is so fast to dismiss Hillary. Nancy Pelosi has done nothing for the democratic party and I will be happy to see her go.

"absent that it seems to me that your prediction tells us more about you than it does about Michigan or our chances therein in November."

Oh my, that was not anticipated. Very well then.

Let me get this straight:

A state moves up its primary in an effort to have more influence, despite established party rules. Only one candidate's name appears on the ballot but her "win" there is discussed ad nauseum in the press for months--good publicity even if it technically means nothing. Finally, with the primary season winding down, the state gets to hold an extremely influential primary funded by the party instead of the state.

Why wouldn't a state move up its next primary to December 2011, or October 2011, or....you get the idea. This is the opposite of punishment and would prove there is no consequences for similar acts. In fact, the state arguably gets the best position possible.

I too wish the voters in Michigan could be heard, and it's unfortunate they've been let down, but this hardly seems like the right course of action in the context of the entire campaign.

Michigan said no already.

What part of no didn't make sense to Hillary?!

In case there is anyone out there who actually believes the Clintons care about the people of Michigan, Williams provides the irrefutable proof that they could care less:

"Senator Clinton has consistently urged that the more that 600,000 votes cast by the people of Michigan be counted and if that is not possible, that a new election be held."

The Voting-Eligible Population (VEP) of Michigan is about 7,350,000. The Democratic turnout was 592,261.

South Carolina's VEP is about 3,220,000. The Democratic turnout was 532,468.

See Hillary's problem? Despite the fact that Michigan's VEP is well over twice that of South Carolina, and despite the fact that there are FAR more Democrats in Michigan, the turnout was roughly the same. Clearly more than half of Michigan's Democrats understood the election was completely bogus.

So what has Hillary been saying for weeks? The original vote should count. To heck with the non-clueless voters who stayed home. Even today, she would be perfectly content to give them the shaft.

It's all about Bill and Hillary Clinton, folks. Spare us the disenfranchisement baloney.

If I could wave a magic wand around it would be for all the superdelegates to get behind Obama (ahead in pledged delegates elected according to the DNC rules) and to just go ahead and seat the FL and MI delegates. It won't undo the unfairness that was the FL and especially the MI vote, but it would probably end the matter. Four or eight years hence I doubt if FL, MI or any other state would be eager to risk a repeat of this godawful embarrassing situation elected officials in those states have created for themselves. I have more sympathy for FL because everyone was on the ballot, and the legislature, which pulled this stunt, is controlled by Republicans. MI was apparently trying to stack the deck, and the irony is, had it waited it might have had more not less influence.

This situation also evinces the incredibly short-term memory of these people and the misdirected obsession that being first actually really, really matters. Even I can remember 1968 (I was a kid) and how it was onto California for the supposedly decisive primary in mid-June -- well, it was tragically decisive.

I refuse to trash Hillary Clinton, but a true leader would realize that allowing the voters to vote (if it can be done fairly) and following the clearly laid out rules of the DNC are both important principles and only a negotiated compromise is going to be fair and sensible.

I've long said that Hillary is a better Senator than Obama. She's wily, she's wonkish, she's a fierce debater, she ... um (don't want to be snarky here, so I'll leave it at that). But for the Presidency, words matter. The Presidency is about arousing the public to support policy. In 2008, the person who has been doing that by a "reality-based" insurmountable lead (twice what McCain has garnered) is Barack Obama.

Despite what so many Hillary supporters say about us "Obamamanics," many of us have come to him through a process that brought us in. Many of us were not exclusively Obama supporters from the start, or we have split our sense of who could best lead us -- only then arriving at Barack Obama.

(My first was John Edwards. I also very much liked Biden. Dodd was, in my opinion, underrated. I've liked Richardson for years. And Hillary has always been my Plan C. How does that compare to the average Hillary-and-only-Hillary-damn-the-party supporter? But, please, continue to call us "Obamamaniacs" -- whatever helps.)

A firehouse primary could be conducted according to the same rules used in our Leelanau County, Michigan, unofficial caucus. Anyone who wants to cast a vote is required to state that they support the Democratic Party and that they either are or will be a registered Michigan voter by election day in November. Since there is no party registration in Michigan, there is no other way to limit Republicans from voting while allowing true Independents to vote. Even this does will not stop Limbaugh from trying to disrupt the process.