Dems face political reality

Albany Times Union: It’s been weeks since it made any sense at all for Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean and other party leaders to try to impose some discipline on the unwieldy process of trying to choose a presidential nominee. Two huge and critically important states wanted to hold their primaries in January, before almost everyone else?

Sure, don’t seat their delegates. Send ’em a message.

But the campaign of 2008 is an extraordinary one, so brutally competitive and so tantalizingly close that literally every state will need to have its say before it’s even remotely clear whether Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama has a more legitimate claim on the 2,025 delegates required to win the nomination.

Worse than a farce

A party convention without Florida’s 210 delegates or Michigan’s 156 delegates would be worse than a farce.

It’s encouraging, then, to see Democrats are swallowing hard and accepting the reality of having both Florida and Michigan vote again. Oh, the weekend was full of mild bickering, with various Democrats offering contrary opinions over how to proceed.

A primary by mail?

An election of such huge potential consequence probably isn’t the time for the state to try what it hasn’t tried before, argues Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida. She could make the same point about Michigan.

So, more traditional voting, then? And who’ll pay for all this?

“The only thing I know to do is to do it over,” says Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida.