Of course do-over. How could we have ever thought it different? This is the Era of Do-Overs. Ours is the cult of doing over. Rules — the unforgivable, the final, the no give-backs — are every day seeming more and more an injustice on principle. “But-but-but…!” Blubbering exceptions everywhere, Appease the Child, each outstretched hand and trembling lip justified by one or another feeling. They wanted to count, those voters in Florida and Michigan; who are you to dare to deny them? Getting our cathartic frisson and malicious jollies out of irrevocable disses is for television, not really-real life. Not politics, where — with the quadrennial vote for President the lone last twig on the tree of citizenship — no end of gross piety is too much fawning before the altar of Every Voice Heard! The Democratic Party, fool that it was, tried to stifle the vox populi with the audacity of command. And what could be more Democratic than enjoying one’s own sloppy seconds of repentant publicity? We absolve us, we absolve us! God loves a sinner come to his understanding…!
Rather, the decision to re-open the possibility of seating delegations from Florida and Michigan has much to do with the current delegate math. Denying Michigan and Florida made a lot of sense when it appeared the consequences of that denial would not be great, and someone would earn the nomination without either state's support. Now, of course, neither candidate can reach a majority with just pledged delegates, barring something catastrophic. It is reasonable and pragmatic under those circumstances to consider restoring the original rules. On some things, rules should be less flexible; the rules by which a private organization chooses representatives for its own activities is not one of those situations.
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