Traditionally, Iowa has always been the nation's first caucus, and New Hampshire the first primary. Those states guard their positions jealously, and so do the parties.

This election season, however, states fell all over themselves to get into the game faster than before, wanting to wield more influence through a heavily front-loaded primary season.

The two parties declared that February fifth was the absolute earliest anyone but the traditionals would be allowed to hold a primary, and if the state parties chose to do otherwise, there would be consequences (maybe not blood, but consequences.)

When Florida and Michigan threatened to do just that, the Democratic National Committee told them if they did, they would lose all their delegates at the national convention. Those delegates that came, if they did, would not be seated. End of discussion.

But these are Democrats, and rebellion is in their blood. So the state parties of Florida and Michigan went ahead with early primaries, hoping to be king-makers anyway. (The GOP stripped only half the delegates of the rebel states; interestingly, despite the punishment, Florida was actually a tipping point for the Giuliani campaign.) The primaries took place, even with only Hillary of the major contenders on the Michigan ballot, and with Barak and Hillary on the Florida ballot, without doing any official campaigning.

Okay, so the Florida and Michigan votes don't count. So what?

So, now that there is an actual nomination still in play, both sides are complaining that the contests in Florida and Michigan weren't "fair." The Clinton camp wants "all the votes to count," while the Obama people are squawking because he wasn't even on the ballot in one of those states, so how can it be fair to lock him out of those delegates? The state parties are mad that their delegates don't count, and the national party is trying to find a way not to look like a passel of clowns falling out of a Shriner car.

For conservatives, this should be an easy one. The rules are the rules. Everybody who was playing the game knew the rules, and didn't change them before the event. Therefore, the delegate chairs stay empty, and nobody gets credit for Florida.

But Democrats (you may remember this from the impeachment hearings) aren't all that fond of what we used to call "the rule of law"--though, in this case, it would be "the rule of rules," because the Democratic National Committee doesn't make actual laws. So Howard Dean and his cabal are trying to find a way to count the votes of the Florida voters at least, because--well, because Florida is a big state, and the Democrats don't want its voters mad during the general election, and because vote-counting is kind of a sore spot with the Florida electorate.

So now they are floating the idea of having a mail-in re-vote. All those people who voted would have to vote again, and all those who didn't vote the first time (who, some would argue, shouldn't get a second chance) would get another bite at the apple. Even though many people are starting to favor this answer, there is yet another problem.

This is going to be expensive. The Democratic National Committee doesn't want to pay for it, because they need all the cash they can get to fight John McCain in the general election on behalf of whoever their eventual candidate turns out to be. And the states don't want to pay for it, either, since there's no reason the taxpayers of Florida should have to foot the bill for another Democratic party shindig.

Whatever, they do, it's great fodder for the Republicans in the general election (are these the incompetent clowns you want taking over your health care system? Much less answering the red phone in the middle of the night?) And, of course, like most things the Democrats get involved in, it promises to be a major stimulus package for the litigation community, since anything they do will be legally challenged and pushed as long and as far as possible.

So, readers of PME, what do you think the Democrats should do? And who should pay for it? And how do you think it will effect the candidate's prospects in the general election? And does it matter who that candidate is?

Discuss.