Dems Trying to Stave Off Armageddon

The Democrat convention is shaping up to be the biggest event in Denver since a nuke bomb was detonated during the Super Bowl (TM) in Tom Clancy's novel Sum of All Fears. They are trying to limit the amount of kilotons prior to convening and contain fallout:

Howard Dean will not bend the party rules to grandfather in the disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida, the Democratic party chairman said in a statement today.

Instead, he put the state parties on notice: either they can wait and allow the credentials committee to decide whether to seat their delegates, or submit to a re-vote sanctioned under DNC rules. "We look forward to receiving their proposals should they decide to submit new delegate selection plans and will review those plans at that time," he said in the statement.

"Everyone seems to be asking what the DNC will do," a Democrat close to Dean said. "But the question is: what will the state parties do."

Dean's statement implies that he has no intention of changing the rules to accommodate any solution proposed by the candidates or the state parties. There has been some suggestion that the two remaining presidential candidates might try to broker a deal among themselves. His line in the sand narrows the options for Hillary Clinton's campaign because it is unlikely that a credentials committee would endorse a delegation congenial to her mathematical interests.

The states are playing rough, Dean is playing rough and Hillary and Obama probably won't agree so that leaves chaos as the only avenue. Clinton will try to claim the Michigan delegates and convince the uncommitteds to go her way. Florida will be up for grabs and the Superdelegates will get wined and dined by both candidates. The end result: the 2008 convention will make Chicago 1968 look like the highly-staged and uneventful Boston 2004 convention.

Sweet baby, a Democrat nuclear winter!