Another Persepctive on Florida & Michigan

Following up on my post from last week about the whole Florida/Michigan mess, I'll just point out this post over at TalkLeft that lays out pretty well how the whole thing went down. Short version - the whole Democratic calendar was completely fucked up, with states shifting endlessly to keep their position in the lineup. It's embarrassing that a system like that is the best we have for picking a presidential candidate.

That still doesn't change the facts that (1) everyone agreed to the Florida/Michigan penalties back in the day because (2) nobody thought it would make any difference in the end. What it does is reinforce the need to change the whole damn system for 2012.

UPDATE: More fuel for the fire - the Michigan Democrats' letter to the DNC rules committee. In brief, the argument is that New Hampshire broke the rules first and suffered no consequences, so Michigan was free to do the same. I'm not particularly convinced. For one thing, as a trained professional criminal defense attorney, I can tell you that, "but juuudge - they did it first!" is not a valid defense. For another, from the letter, it appears that everyone was on board with New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, and South Carolina being the first four and all NH did was move itself within that order - it's rule breaking had no impact on Michigan.