I was talking with a co-worker about the current political situation (he's from Canada) and discussing the primaries and we were trying to come up with a way to resolve the Michigan and Florida situations. We were discussing the costs of primaries and the debate between the DNC and the Governors of FL and MI when the news announced that Obama had raised $55 million for the month of Feb. and an idea occurred to me on how to solve two problems and garner a lot of positive press for Obama at the same time...
I am not a lawyer (and have no clue about the ins and outs of campaign finance law especially -- except for understanding the $2300 donation limit thing), so this could be totally illegal, but it does make sense -- in a way.
The news was saying that there was an initiative on the part of someone (DNC?) to raise the funds from private donors to re-run the primaries in MI and FL -- esp. since the Governors seem unwilling (Crist) or unable financially (Granholm) to fund a new election. Given that Obama raised ~$20mm more than HRC this month, but both have raised buckets of cash, he could offer to put forward half of the funds necessary for the elections in MI and FL -- on the contingency that HRC's campaign put forward the other half.
I think the estimates were for ~$15mm for FL and ~$8mm for MI. That would be the "overage" of what he beat HRC by this past month. In addition, this would help avoid issues of "buying" elections by monied insiders if both campaigns kicked in exactly half. There could be no argument about Obama paying more than Clinton (or vice versa).
Given that there are very few primary states left, and the current rates of fundraising, the campaigns still have a ton of cash to compete in the likes of Puerto Rico and Guam (and PA) without breaking their budgets.
Of course, given that these are primaries -- it'd need to be stipulated that the funds come from those available for primary campaigns.
This would be extremely expensive for the campaign, but imagine the goodwill generated in two states with a strong probability to swing in the general...even if (or especially if) HRC balks.
Someone will probably tell me I'm insane (or the plan's illegal -- more likely), but if it isn't illegal, it might be a great play to counter-punch at the Clinton campaign without having to hit below the belt.