The bunny was the first animal I had ever run over and I was tormented by the thought that I might not have killed him but instead left him to a lingering painful death.  After putting my son out at our house, I circled back around to check on my victim.  He was lying stretched out in the road.  Fearing that he might bite me if I got out to poke him, I made what I thought to be a merciful decision: I ran over him again.

Upon my return to the house my son - knowing how upset I had been - asked me what I did.  Hearing my reply he said, "You know the rabbit was probably lying there thinking, it's a miracle, that car just grazed me.  I'm going to lie here a minute and then get up and hop back to the hole."  Many Florida Democrats must be having that same bunny feeling: "Yeah, we got reamed in 2000 but, you know, it was one of those once in a century things" and then they headed back to the polls...

Yesterday after schmacking Terry Jeffrey, Donna Brazile had this to say when Wolf Blitzer questioned her about James Carville's contention that 8% of Democratic voters had been disenfranchised by the disqualification of the Florida and Michigan delegations:  "Everyone knew the rules of the game before they got into the contest.  They could change the rules to benefit one or the other but it wouldn't be fair to the 48 states who complied." 

Now I'm an HRC supporter and obviously I would like to have the 178 delegates from the combined Florida and Michigan primaries and the almost 1.2 million actual votes Hillary polled in her column; having written that, I would feel the same way were the delegates and popular vote in Senator Obama's favor.  (You're just going to have to take that on faith, kind of like I take Senator Obama's uncast vote against the war in Iraq on faith.)  You see, unlike Ms. Brazile, I'm not sure "everyone knew the rules of the game" and, even in the unlikely event that the ordinary joe and josephine voters did know the rules, I'm not sure they understood them. 

Most Dems know that the state parties were told that only the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire primary, the Nevada caucus and the South Carolina primary had the right to vote prior to February 5; not knowing that this would be the primary season that wouldn't die, Michigan and Florida sought to bring a little national attention to their primaries by getting into the early fray.  Now having voted most of my life in either Tennesse or California, I know what it is to be the red headed step child of the primary process and I can understand wanting to feel that one's vote counts.  Still, ever the "see too many sides of the issue to be useful" liberal, I can also understand that a political party - even a herding cats political party like the Democrats - must maintain discipline in order to be viable.  The obvious answer here is to chop off the hands of the party elite and the state legislators who allowed these ill conceived responses to the national party; instead, the Democratic leadership has chosen to disenfrancise more than 2.3 million people who took the time to mail in a ballot or actually go to the polls.  Yessiree, Bob, that'll learn'em.  

We spend hundreds of millions of dollars, thousands upon thousands of man hours trying to teach people the importance, the responsibility, the privilege of voting and then when people take the time to cast a vote we say, "Sorry, the party's having a temper tantrum and so the voters have to take a time out." 

Make any argument you want about "the voters knew" - I doubt that a majority of the people who voted in Florida and Michigan knew that there was no point whatsoever in asking for an early ballot, being late to work to stop by the polling place, voting after work when they would rather have gone home.  Hell, why even register when the right can be taken away by the party elders?  When these decisions were made I rather doubt the party knew how important those votes would be now but that's really not the point.  It doesn't matter if it's 538 votes that decided a Presidential election, 2.3 million votes that count for a lot in the nominating process or two votes from people who supported Dennis Kucinich, no person, no entity has the right to take away a person's vote except in response to a specific act by that specific individual.  It's even worse that last time it was the Repubs and the Supremes; now that the Democrats have done it too, how can a voter trust anyone?  Maybe those that voted did have some idea that things hadn't been straightened out yet but the very fact that they voted anyway speaks of the trust they had that those in charge would get things right...

instead the Democratic party circled the block and ran over them again.