2 plays
Play #1
Scene: A child looks like he’s up to mischief.
Dad: If you throw your food on the wall, you won’t be getting that to you wanted.
(Child considers and then throws the food.)
Dad: OK. No toy for you. I’m sorry.
Mom: Hey, let’s go to the mall.
Dad: Let’s not. He’ll throw a tantrum if he sees the toy and I already said he can’t have it.
Mom: But I really want to go to the mall. Let’s just get him the toy and it’ll be fine.
What is your initial reaction? Are the Mom and Dad good at parenting? Is the child spoiled?
Play #2
Scene: Two states look like they’re up to mischief.
DNP: If you move your primary dates up, we will not seat your delegates or count your primaries.
(States consider and move their primary dates up anyway.)
DNP: OK, I warned you, now your primaries won’t count.
Hillary Clinton: But I really really want their votes!
DNP: OK, we’ll take back our ultimatum and potentially cost the party tens of millions of dollars.
Draw your own conclusions.
arnoldcam 
How’s this for an opposing viewpoint:
Can’t the DNP choose their own rules to select their nominee? They’ve chosen when and how states should hold elections rather arbitrarily. The decision to punish Michigan and Florida for moving their dates was rather arbitrary. So why not another arbitrary decision to allow a re-vote? Can’t the national party run their affairs however they want to in order to select their own candidate? No laws were broken. They’ve raised the ‘tens of millions’ to spend however they see fit. Maybe these elections are the best use of it. I’m not sure the situation has the moral significance that many are attaching to it (e.g. who’s the ‘spoiled child’ in Play #2, the states or Hillary? — the analogy breaks down a little).
Having said that, caving in on this issue probably means that no states will listen to the DNP in the future when they make ‘rules.’ In the end, I wonder how much difference the re-vote will make if they more or less split the votes.
The Kyle
March 15, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Sure they can make their own rules. But any time you make an ultimatum and then not follow thru just further erodes your ability to make future ultimatums. Take the WGA for instance, when they threaten strike, you know they’re going to strike.
arnold
March 16, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I don’t know about you, but if I had purposely thrown my food on the wall as a kid, not geting a toy would have been the LEAST of my worries!
Peggy C
March 19, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Pretty much the same here.
Maybe the food throwng baby is Florida. They seem to have problems in every election.
arnold
March 20, 2008 at 12:20 pm