I have yet to hear a reporter ask Mrs. Clinton the key question in this controversy: If the DNC cannot make rules that stick, how is it going to keep states from holding early primaries in future elections?
Many states got tired of holding their presidential primaries after the race was over, and playing second fiddle to Iowa and New Hampshire. A massive race to the bottom ensued, with each state wanting to go first, threatening to start the Primary Season a year before the General Election! The DNC stepped in and with near-unanimous agreement of all 50 states, passed a set of rules that served as a compromise, allowing 4 states to go early with the rest holding their contests no earlier than 2/5.
Knowing the rules and the consequences, Florida and Michigan elected to hold their primaries in January. Well before the primaries were held, the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee (RBC) voted to strip Florida and later Michigan of their entire delegations, asked the candidates to remove their names from the ballots and not to campaign in those states should they proceed to break the Rules. Florida and Michigan held their primaries in January and the DNC enforced the Rules.
Sen. Clinton benefited from these two contests in part because she campaigned in Florida and because all candidates except Clinton and Dodd followed the RBC rules and removed their names from the Michigan ballot. Now the Clinton campaign is lobbying hard to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations. A number of suggestions have been made to "reinfranchise" the two delegations, but if the DNC reverses itself and seats the delegations as selected, it will not be able to enforce any rules in the future. The final arbiter of the dispute is the body of the 8/25/2008 Convention itself, which will vote on any recommendation made by the Credentials Committee, but one can only hope that the point will become moot long before then.
As a side-effect, the Republican party comes out looking a whole lot more "democratic" in all this. Whereas five states defied the RNC rules, the candidates were not told to forego campaigning in those states and the sanction imposed was to seat half the delegates selected. This decision too can get overturned by the Convention’s credentials committee, but since McCain has sewn up the race it won't change the outcome.
The point remains, if Clinton is successful in getting the DNC to prove itself incapable of enforcing its rules, how will the DNC be able to stop the headlong race to the bottom of the Primary calendar in the future?