“Clinton’s campaign manager backing the DNC, said, “We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process, and we believe the DNC’s rules and its calendar provide the necessary structure to respect and honor that role.” So Florida and Michigan didn’t get their primaries. They didn’t get campaigns. They didn’t have serious Get Out The Vote efforts. And now, they’re being cynically used, the language of democracy revisited and dusted off in service of a power play for additional delegates. Where, rightly or wrongly, the campaigns agreed to deny them a primary, now Clinton’s campaign, which in Michigan won because they were the only campaign on the ballot and in Florida won because no one contested their lead, is demanding they be seated. The intervention did not come in time to give Florida and Michigan a full role in the democratic process, only in time to let the Clinton campaign benefit from their essential disenfranchisement….This would be wrong if Barack Obama had done it, wrong if John Edwards or Bill Richardson or Dennis Kucinich did it. And it is wrong when the Clinton campaign does it. If they believed democratic principles were at stake, then there was a time to stand for democracy and ensure Floridians would host a campaign and have a voice. They let that moment pass. And they did not do so passively; they spoke up in agreement with the DNC’s decision. Now they are circling back for advantage, pretending to speak up for the process when in reality they are only advocating for themselves. That does not honor Florida and Michigan’s participation. It cheapens it.” –Ezra Klein, on how the Clintons are trying to change the rules of the game