Maybe this has been diaried before and I just missed it, but 2008 isn't the first time Michigan jumped the gun in a presidential primary season. There was a post a few days ago about the blatant hypocrisy of Terry McAuliffe, who as DNC Chair stared down Michigan's threat to move up their primary in 2004, but as a Clinton surrogate believes that all Michigan delegates should be seated in 2008.
But I didn't know until this morning, when a commenter mentioned it in passing at TPM Election Central, that all the major candidates removed their names from the Michigan ballot in 2000... because Michigan broke the rules that year too.
In fact, I don't remember Michigan's primary fiasco even being a story in 2000; it was a big deal that McCain won the GOP primary there, but the fact that Michigan Democrats held a primary and none of the major candidates showed up was barely a blip on the radar.
Admittedly Hillary Clinton is in a slightly different position: She's losing by a much narrower margin than Bill Bradley was, so that it's just barely possible to imagine a scenario where she colludes with Michigan, wrecks the Party's ability to control its primary calendar, and gains enough support to become the 2008 nominee. Bradley didn't face that temptation, because Gore locked up the nomination with or without Michigan's delegates - but, then again, Hillary Clinton couldn't have known that she'd desperately need Michigan's delegates until long after she made the decision to keep her name on the ballot there.
So it's interesting to note that Michigan has played its game of chicken with the DNC before - repeatedly - and that Gore, Bradley, Obama, Edwards - all of the major candidates except Hillary - took their names off the ballot. And it's also interesting that, rather than pushing the DNC to seat delegates based on the results of their flawed 2000 primary (Uncommitted 71%, Lyndon LaRouche 29%), Michigan Democrats quickly scheduled a do-over: An open caucus, held on March 11th, 2000, that sent a full slate of delegates to the convention.
If you didn't have enough reasons before to call shenanigans on Hillary Clinton, then here's a couple more reasons why her arguments don't hold water: She ignored precedent when she left her name on the Michigan ballot, and her supporters' calls to seat delegates based on the flawed primary are inconsistent with what Michigan Democrats did in 2000.