If the rules of the Democratic party and party custom were in effect, Barack Obama would be declared the party nominee today. He has won a majority of pledged delegates. (The only way to score official points in the primary/caucus process is to win pledged delegates.) In all primary campaigns since the inception of the superdelegates in the early 1980s, the superdelegates have gone along with the candidate who has won the most pledged delegates. That has been the custom.
This year the rules have been rewritten by one of the candidates as the campaign has gone along. Unfortunately, the only way for the national Democratic party to enforce its rules is to deny seating at the convention to those who break the rules. That is a rather draconian method, but a party that cannot enforce its rules is simply not a party. Michigan and Florida broke the rules and cut in near the head of the line. If they can do that with impunity, there is no point of having rules and any future improvements in the rules for primaries/caucuses will be moot. (I am not saying that no accommodation should be made for seating some delegates from Michigan and Florida, but these rule-breaking states should be penalized in some way.)
The national Democratic party must show that Democrats are not easily swayed by misdirection and bluff (as they often are). Examples of misdirection and bluff are: 1) adding up all votes from all primary states is a legitimate method of scoring, 2) counting votes from states that held illegal primaries is necessary or else many voters in those "slighted" states will stay home in November. (This assumes that the overwhelming concern of many voters will be that they were "slighted" by the national Democratic party and that that concern will far outweigh their concerns about such things as the economy, Iraq and health care.), 3) claim that there is a crystal ball that predicts that Obama will not be as strong an opponent against John McCain as Clinton would be. (No reputable student of voting behavior has ever been able to find a way to measure voters’ attitudes this far in advance of a (Nov.) election. Certainly, the results of contests between two Democrats in primaries tells almost nothing about a contest between a Democrat and a Republican in the fall.)
Nothing less than the future of the national Democratic party is at stake here. Should concern for the feelings of the Clinton’s outweigh that?