They NEVER publicly opposed the change of the date.  So it is disingenuous for them to claim they were victims when they voted for the date change and made no effort to change it and no public protests of the date change.

It makes me picture them sitting in wing-backed chairs with antimacassars behind their heavily pomaded heads.

  Obama had national TV ads that ran during the last 10 days or so before the Florida primary.  Wonderful timing, wouldn't you say?  Because he bought the bundle or package of nat'l tv ads, they showed in Florida.

  He was the only one with any kind of campaigning there!
And yet you believe he didn't campaign there?
  They were all allowed to do fundraisers though.  After one, he walked across the street and answered questions from reporters.  When told he was, then, campaigning, he said he didn't realize that and wouldn't do that again.

  Obama tends to be unaware of all these things which can be problematical for him.

  The point is that 1.7 million voters decided they wanted to vote despite the problems party hacks were having over the date situation.  They did vote.  And now their votes should be recognized, since the Republican legislature tacked on the paper-trail rider to the first vote (which the Dems had wanted for voting confirmation for so long) and when the Dems tried to get the date moved back to Feb. 5, the Republican-dominated legislature voted them down.

  If you care about the voters who went to the trouble to vote, you will care about something FAIR being done re the votes about which so many felt so strongly.  People care more about their candidate not having to lose even a BIT of the lead.  There's little principle involved in this.

  Dean has to be incredibly rigid and DUMB to not do anything about this.  I always remember the Florida ballot situation from Yr 2000 that lost us the entire election.  This way it certainly will happen again, thanks to Dean and Pelosi and those who feel they will do ANYthing so that Obama doesn't lose officially in Florida even though he lost the vote at the time it ran, by 17 percentage points.

What do you do about the people who did not vote because they were informed by the Democratic Party their votes will not count?  You are so worried about not counting the votes of the people who did vote, you are forgetting about the people who were, if the votes are seated, falsely told their votes wouldn't count anyway.

As an Obama supporter I would support a revote as long as it was done responsibly and fairly in the state of FL.  I find it highly unlikely, a state with FL's track record, could create a primary in 2 months time and have the results be done properly.

Once the nominee was announced, their delegates would have been seated. End of story.

There would have been no re-votes. Those "invalid" delegates, would have been magically 'validated'.  

Officially, and by DNC rules they would be still "invalid", but nobody would have been so mean, or legalistic, or picky about details, to bother arguing about rules, delegates, punishments, or haggling the cost of re-votes to "legitimate" them in that case.

In this scenario, they still would not have officially counted, and still would have not been 'legitimate' by 'the rules'.

The voters would still have been disenfranchised.

There would have still been voters who didn't vote because they were told it wouldn't count, but nobody would care, because it was all over and done with.  

They were not meant to count, they were not meant to be included in the primaries this year - at least not early in the primary season. They were "taken out of play" - at least temporarily.

If they had gone in the Super-Tuesday rounds, they might have bumped one candidate's momentum up too much.  

Can't have that, might too "unfair", so have to take them out of play to level the playing-field.  

If Obama's early momentum had carried him through OH and TX, there would have been no argument about who was to blame, no discussion about 'validity' or 'legitimacy' or 'rules' or 'punishments', or going to committees etc.  

Those two 'invalid' state primaries would have been accepted without a murmur, and lumped in with all the other late season states.

But now, things haven't gone according to plan.

so, only NOW, are they not 'legitimate', and everybody is arguing.

No matter how high the record turnouts this year, the primaries are still well under expected turnouts in the GE, and are not representative of the 'will of the people' - or even will of Democrat people, with so much cross-over voting, caucusing, inadequate checks on eligibility etc.  

Also, the Democrat primaries do not allocate  delegates proportionate to the "will of the people", Democrat voters or even population. They are heavily biased, or mathematically weighted, towards little states, but also red states, but not similarly to the ECVs, and quite open to gaming (especially if you weight it even more heavily, by removing a couple of big states to begin with):

Dem delegate math

Most Americans dont usually vote in primaries, let alone understand how it works for either Party. A single survey of Dem voters saying they prefer popular vote or delegate counts is meaningless.

IMHO, the main upside to all this drama, is that average Americans will have become far better informed of the system, for future primary elections.

Maybe its time they learned the rules that say candidates must reach the "magic number".

Until that point is reached, the count of delegates or popular vote is not representative of anything.

The rules state that if it goes through without a candidate reaching the "magic number", then it goes to Super-Dels to vote by conscience, not as rubber-stampers, when it is essentially tied by whatever criteria you apply to it.  

Florida Democrats weighed their options, and felt that the reward they thought they'd receive for breaking the rules was bigger than the punishment that would be handed down.  It was only once they saw that the punishment forthcoming was more than they expected when they started complaining, but even then, they didn't begin drawing up contingency plans for holding a primary contest in compliance with DNC rules, or looking for another way to solve the problem.

Michigan had the same problem, but they've drawn up a measure to hold a primary contest within the DNC rules, and so have been able to fix their own deficiency.

Small states being host to the early primaries is the way the primary system must be kept in order to allow for Presidential runs without massive national name recognition and a gigantic war chest.  Florida and Michigan are trying to destroy that primary system for their own selfish ends, and they cannot be allowed to do so.

At this point, I can see only two honorable options, although with enough prodding, there's a third I could find acceptable.  The honorable options are to leave Florida out, or to give them an honorary delegation, either by seating their delegation as-is without voting rights, or by splitting their delegation 50/50 so they cannot impact the states that held primary contests under the rules of the DNC.  

I could be persuaded into seating the delegates from the illegitimate Jan 29th contest only if the punishment applied to those pledged delegates is increased to a level that actually discourages further line jumping in 2012.  50% isn't close to enough, since Florida and Michigan expected to get hit with that and went through with their early primaries anyway.  Consider this: using the delegate allocations from 2008, if California decides to jump the line in 2012, and the 50% of pledged delegates penalty has been legitimized as the correct penalty, an early 50% of California will be tied with Florida for the third largest primary in the nation, behind only Texas and New York.  They could move up, be more important, and not really lose any of their stature in doing so.

Something around a loss of 90% of their delegates is much more appropriate, and will keep other large states in line.  Even still, I wonder if a loss of 90% of their delegates would be enough.  For Florida, losing 90% of their pledged delegates puts them at 19(actually 18.5, rounding up) delegates, which is still more delegates than South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Vermont, District of Columbia, Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, and Idaho.

If a state like California were to try to move up, even taking 90% of their pledged delegates would leave them with 37, which is more than the above listed states, Arkansas, Kansas, New Mexico, Nevada, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Maine, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Mississippi, and West Virginia.  California could take a 90% penalty and still have more delegates than 19 other states(and DC).