Glen J
You may not know all the details of all this, especially if you haven't watched it from the inside.
Here's how it went down:
The Michigan and Florida legislatures decided to advance the dates of their primary elections ahead of the February 5th cut-off put forth by both the RNC and DNC.
Both parties punished both states for doing so. The Republicans cut their delegate votes to 1/2 vote per delegate, or maybe cut the number of delegates in half... I'm not sure. The practical result is the same. The Democrats said that they would not seat any delegation selected according to the results in either state. Representatives of all of the major campaigns were members of the DNC committee that made the decision. Nobody objected.
All of the Democratic candidates signed agreements with the DNC not to participate in Michigan, and not to campaign in Florida. All of the candidates except Senator Clinton and (I think) Representative Kucinich asked the Secretary of State to remove their names from the ballot. You could argue that having one's name on the ballot is, by itself, not "participating" in the election, but then, you could argue about the meaning of the word "is," too.
Senator Obama wins Iowa. Senator Clinton comes in third.
Clinton wins New Hampshire. Obama comes in 2nd.
Clinton wins NV, Obama wins SC. Somewhere in this period, MI and FL hold their primaries. Clinton wins them both. Talk of the unfairness of not seating the delegations begins to come from the Clinton campaign.
February 5th is a split decision. More talk about MI and FL.
More primares, more caucuses, Obama extends his lead. Clinton and company get louder about MI and FL. A pattern seems to be emerging here...
Saturday: The DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee votes on proposals from the representatives of the MI and FL to seat their delegations with 1/2 votes. The committee agrees. Florida is unanimous, Michigan vote is 19-8.
Today: Obama clinches nomination.
The initial decision to completely reject any delegation chosen by primaries held ahead of party rules was stupid, IMHO, and I think the Republicans did it right. If you knew me, you'd know how infrequently I say that. The Dems ended up doing what they should have done to begin with, after four months of drama. Of course, had that been the initial decision, the Clintons wouldn't have done anything differently, because what they really considered to be unfair is that they were losing. It was always about them. Duh... they're the Clintons. As President Carter said about them, "They're always there when they need you."
The Clintons abandoned a promise when it got in the way of their path to power. And anyone's surprised by that?
--Shannon