Somebody explain this to me.
Faced with the same set of facts, the GOP chose to sanction Florida and Michigan right away by taking away half of their delegates. The GOP candidates were then free to campaign and fundraise in those states.
Democrats embraced a weird initial ruling that took away all of the FL and MI delegates. Everyone on this side of ground level knew that would not stand, and it hasn't. But only after 6 months of bad publicity and the reality that they left those two states to the GOP for broken-field running.
So who really got punished? Local TV stations in those two states? A handful of political consultants who got shut out of some ad buys? What was the real effect of all of this bother? Why not just do what the Republicans did, so that we don't endanger our chances of winning in the fall?
I just don't understand why our party is so enamored of argument when leadership is called for. Was Howard Dean prevented by the rules from imposing this penalty 6 months ago? Was the DNC?
I'm really frustrated that we went through all this garbage for all of this time when this is an outcome that could have been met a long damn time ago. If only there were some leadership.