As we are all no doubt aware, the primary election season is more front loaded than ever before. This occured because many states decided that they wanted to make sure that their voice was heard in the presidential nominating process. Having grown up in California with its June primary, this is an understandable impulse. Of course, this move to the front of the line was met with predictable resistance from the states that traditionally hold early primaries or caucuses, namely Iowa (first contest), New Hampshire (first primary), Nevada (first in the west) and South Carolina (first in the south). With other states rushing to the front of the line and the prospect that the first contests of the 2008 presidential election would be held in 2007, the parties took action to try and restore order by sanctioning any unauthorized state that held its primary or caucus before February 5. At this point, the paths of the parties differ and I'm not sure what exactly happened with the Republican sanctions. What I do know is that vigorous campaigns occured in both Michigan and Florida for Republican delegates. There was also a Republican caucus in Wyoming that did not seem to draw any campaigns (Romney won) or controversy.

The Democratic National Committee, in its effort to restore order took a harder line approach. They ruled that any state jumping the gun would be stripped of its delegates and that any candidate that campaigned in such a state would be penalized. Michigan (Democratic Governor, split legislature) and Florida (Republican Governor and heavily Republican legislature) decided to go ahead with early primaries. In Michigan, Hillary Clinton, Mike Gravel and Chris Dodd (who had withdrawn from the race before the election chose to remain on the ballot. Dennis Kucinich tried unsuccessfully to pull his name. (He later chose to campaign.) Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and John Edwards removed their names from the ballot. All the major candidates refrained from campaigning in Michigan and Clinton drew 56% support compared to 31% for uncommitted. In Florida, the remaining candidates (Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Gravel) stayed on the ballot but did not campaign in the state. Apparently some Obama ads made it onto the airwaves in Florida as part of a national cable ad buy. The Clinton campaign briefly tried to make an issue out of this, but the DNC did not consider it a violation of the pledge against campaigning as it was impossible to exclude Florida from the national buy. Clinton "won" Florida 50% to 33% for Obama and 14% for Edwards. She held a victory celebration and vowed to see her delegates seated at the Democratic National Convention.

Of course, the Democratic party now has a bit of a problem on its hands. At the time the all the decisions regarding election dates and sanctions were made, everybody (except me, but I wasn't writing at the time so I can't prove it) was predicting that Clinton and Guiliani would have their nominations wrapped up by Super Dooper Tuesday (2/5) at the latest and the delegations from Florida and Michigan would be irrelevant in choosing the nominee. Since everybody knows that neither party can afford to bar the delegations of two large swing states from their conventions, the expectaion was that the delegates would be seated without influencing the actual nominating process. The sanctions would have been meaningless. As recently as the New Hampshire primary on January 8, Clinton stated that the Florida and Michigan contests were meaningless. After all, she was the comeback kid in New Hampshire. Her defeat in Iowa was behind her.

Then came Nevada where she "won" the election but received fewer delegates than Obama. And suddenly everyone realized that it was all about the delegates. We now know that there is no candidate in either party that could sweep Sweep Super Tuesday and end up with enough delegates to cement the nomination. Both parties have had their fields winnowed down to the point where you have two front runners (Romney and McCain, Clinton and Obama) and a king or queen maker (Huckabee, who will support McCain and Edwards who should go with Obama), but both races could easily go all the way to the conventions, and at the conventions, it's all about the delegates.

So due to the sanctions, we have a scenario where there is a likelihood of a close race at the convention. There are a total of 366 delegates from Florida and Michigan petitioning to be seated, and those delegates are divided according to uncontested elections, including one (Michigan) in which Clinton was less in compliance with the sanctions than Obama. What is the DNC to do?

As I said before, the DNC cannot afford to snub either state. But what will it do to Clinton's legitimacy as a candidate if she were to get the nomination only with the benefit of both states? I think it would have a disasterous impact on the new voters that are coming into the process because on the wings of Obama's change platform. Now I'm not saying that Clinton should not run and run to win, but whoever wins needs to win without that victory being tainted by the perception of the establishment playing with the rules to get their candidate in at all costs. (This reasoning also applies to a victory based on super delegates, but that's another story.)

Howard Dean and the DNC need to find away out of this potential trainwreck, and I am happy to help them find it. Here's my solution. If, after Super Tuesday, it appears that the Florida and Michigan delegates may be needed to reach the necessary number of delegates, the DNC should agree to seat the delegates, but only if the state parties hold a new primary or caucus in which all remaining candidates can campaign and, since their miscalculation led to this mess, the DNC should pay at least half of the cost. That brings Florida and Michigan back into the fold and ensures that both campaigns have a proper opportunity to make their cases to the voters.