Right. Carl Levin was complaining about this months ago. Note that New Hampshire moved up their primary before Michigan and Florida did.
From the DELEGATE SELECTION RULES FOR THE 2008 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION (pdf), here’s the rule which was broken:
Michigan (Jan 15 primary) and Florida (Jan 29) clearly are afoul of this rule. However, so are Iowa (Jan 3) and New Hampshire (Jan 8), both of which held their caucus/primary before the allowed date.
Given that New Hampshire has a state law that mandates when its primary is held, I don’t think they cared about the penalty for holding it too early. They would have had it anyway even if the delegates were not seated, and the candidates would have run there anyway because it’s New Hampshire, the traditional first primary.
The other states were pushing for something with no precedent, and I suspect that’s why they were smacked down.
According to what I have read, breaking the rule about moving the primary automatically results in the loss of half of the delegates. The Rules committee has the option to increase the penalty if they want, which is what they did to Michigan and Florida. The ruling Saturday was basically just lowering the punishment back down to the mandatory level.
Personally, I would have preferred they gave half the votes to the delegates that were elected, and left the superdelegates with no votes at all. This would have been especially appropriate in Michigan, since the governor there is a superdelegate who signed the law that screwed her citizens.
I thought it was the RNC who mandated the loss of half the delegates as punishment while the DNC said from the start it would be a total loss.
The 2006 rules which I linked to above says this:
I admit to being confused at how that morphed into loss of all delegates (as it obviously has before being changed back again), but it certainly wasn’t all the delegates “from the start.”
Does anyone remember who won the Michigan and Florida primaries in 2004? 2000? Was there even more than one active candidate for each party by that point in the process? Usually about 45 states are made irrelevant to the nominating process; that the Democrats reduced that to 2 this year could be seen as a huge improvement.
They moved their primaries forward to a time when they expected the nomination to still be undecided. They wanted to have some say in the process and to have the attention of the candidates.
Why not have all state primaries on the same day then? In the months prior to that day, let the candidates campaign when and where they will and take their chances.
Because in almost every modern election, the delegate count means nothing. After the first few primaries a leader emerges and swamps the competition. By the third or fourth week, all challengers have dropped out and the winner wins they remaining primaries with 80+ percent of the vote. The final delegate count is usually something like 3,800 to 35.
Florida and Michigan thought that they would be early states that influenced who the eventual winner would be by being one of the first, not knowing that this election would be one in which raw delegate numbers actually mattered…
Because then the campaign would focus in California, New York, Florida, etc., and not focus in any of the smaller states. This would be bad because it would essentially exclude those voters from the process, and make them less inclined to come out in November.
Because it locks out candidates who don’t start off with a large national reputation. Barack Obama probably couldn’t have won under a system where he had to compete in all states right off the bat. But if the states spread their primaries out it gives lesser-known candidates time to get their message out.
Just to be clear, this is a party primary, not an election. The party can (and does) set whatever rules it wants to select its candidate. The concept of superdelegates is at least as worthy of “outrage” as the FL/MI fiasco has been. It’s a bad analogy to compare this to voting for our officials in the actual election.
Because the rules committee is allowed to change the penalty any way they want. After the two states broke the rules, the committee (including, BTW, Clinton’s Harold Ickes, who made so much noise about not disenfranchising the voters Saturday) voted to remove all of their delegates.
My personal idea for primaries, for both parties, would be have Iowa and New Hampshire around the beginning of February, then a week later, the 4 smallest population states have their primary, a week later, the next 4 smallest, and continue until the last primary has the largest population states. The traditions of NH and Iowa are preserved, the smallest states get to have a say, but it is very unlikely anyone will clinch anything until the last few weeks. But since I am not king of the world, I can’t make that happen. 
That may have been true in the old days. But now we have the telegraph which sends information around the country in minutes. And I hear tell of a new thing called a Ra-dio which will transmit sound instantaneously! Once everybody has one of those in their sittin’ room, all Americans can find out about the candiates at the same time. In the far distant future of course.
I like that idea. Another way is to let NH and Iowa have their primary/caucus and then divide the other 48 states into four regions of twelve states each. This way, the candidate needs to have a certain level of national appeal to score a lot of delegates early on unlike your plan.
Part of the reason for a longer campaign for to get to know the candidates better. All kinds of things happen on the campaign trail, like Howards Dean’s yell and Wright’s sermons. Just 4 or 5 primary days would really change the dynamics of that. Not necessarily for the worse I admit.