Few pundits have been willing to call what Hillary Clinton's campaign is trying to do in Florida and Michigan as cheating, but I think more should.
It is patently unfair for a candidate to abide by a pledge not to compete in a state, have her rivals not compete in that state, and then when an election gets tight and the polls show her leading in an uncontested poll, to try and do and end run around the rules to get those delegates admitted. These delegates were not supposed to be in the nomination process, and to admit them now is an insult to Obama and Edwards supporters who would have done more in those states if they had known they would have "counted."
It's too late for Obama or Edwards to effectively campaign in Florida (and obviously Michigan is over), and so her "victory" there is patheticly uncontested.
But Hillary's camp is trying to focus attention away from South Carolina and suggest that she might have actually "won" this state so she can go forward on Super Tuesday suggesting that she really won the last state. Thus, even if she loses her appeal, she focuses attention on a state other than her crushing defeat in South Carolina.
But is this what our political process really means? Are we really an "ends justifies the means" nation? I hope not.
If you add up her attempts to prevent polling stations on the Las Vegas strip, misconstrue Obama's Reagan comments, distribute false information about Obama's pro-choice record in New Hampshire, and play dangerous racial politics by invoking Jessie Jackson's failed Presidential bids to paint Obama as a "black candidate" rather than a transformational figure - you simply get disgusted.
We are all supposed to support whoever wins this process. But you don't beat Republicans by becoming them. And frankly, it's insuling when people suggest that critisizing the Clinton's is somehow DISLOYAL. This is a Republican talking point on the war - that people who critisize the policies of their country are somehow unpatriotic. Why can it simply not be that critisizing the Clintons is an effort to improve the Democratic Party?