WASHINGTON (AP) – Michigan and Florida alone can’t save Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign.

Interviews with those considering how to handle the two states’ banished convention delegates found little interest in the former first lady’s best-case scenario. Her position, part of a formidable comeback challenge, is that all the delegates be seated in accordance with their disputed primaries.

Even if they were, it wouldn’t erase Barack Obama’s growing lead in delegates.

 The Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, a 30-member panel charged with interpreting and enforcing party rules, is to meet May 31 to consider how to handle Michigan and Florida’s 368 delegates.

Last year, the panel imposed the harshest punishment it could render against the two states after they scheduled primaries in January, even though they were instructed not to vote until Feb. 5 or later. Michigan and Florida lost all their delegates to the national convention, and all the Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in the two states, stripping them of all the influence they were trying to build by voting early.

But now there is agreement on all sides that at least some of the delegates should be restored in a gesture of party unity and respect to voters in two general election battlegrounds.

Clinton has been arguing for full reinstatement, which would boost her standing. She won both states, even though they didn’t count toward the nomination and neither candidate campaigned in them. Obama even had his name pulled from Michigan’s ballot.

The Associated Press interviewed a third of the panel members and several other Democrats involved in the negotiations and found widespread agreement that the states must be punished for stepping out of line. If not, many members say, other states will do the same thing in four years.

“We certainly want to be fair to both candidates, and we want to be sure that we are fair to the 48 states who abided by the rules,” said Democratic National Committee Secretary Alice Germond, a panel member unaligned with either candidate. “We don’t want absolute chaos for 2012.

“We want to reach out to Michigan and Florida and seat some group of delegates in some manner, at least most of us do. These are two critical states for the general (election) and the voters of those states who were not the people who caused this awful conundrum to occur deserve our attention and deserve to be a part of our process and deserve to be at the convention,” she said.

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The Democratic National Committee do an about-face and ratify the fraudulent Florida primary, in which case, Michigan’s even more fraudulent primary results would also be accepted. Need I remember anyone that Sen. Clinton, (D-NY), won both those states.

Howard Dean and Florida’s elected officials are trying to figure out a way to do this now.

And the next presidential primary and caucus seasons will be even more chaotic. I mean, Michigan were supposed to follow party rules. They thumbed their collective noses at those rules and there’s no consequence.

Thank God for Newt Gingrich.

Where would we be without him wisely guiding us to the path of reason and understanding?

The august Mr. Gingrich is dispensing advice on the conundrum the Democratic Party may soon confront if one of their presidential candidates does not win the nomination outright.

The race for the nomination is tighter than (what would Dan Rather say here?) tick on a dog’s ear (is how Katie Couric, Mr. Rather’s successor, now says it). There’s talk now that 796 super-delegates, elected officials and other party functionaries, may now decide who gets the nomination, Mrs. Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama.

The question is what to do about the results of the Florida and Michigan primaries, which have at stake 366 delegates. Both states, in violation of Democratic Party rules, moved their primaries up in the calendar to increase their states’ influence in the presidential nomination contests. As consequence, the party punished them by taking away their delegates. All the candidates running at the time also agreed not to campaign in the states (although Sen. Hillary Clinton found ways to squeeze in appearances in Florida and even showed up to claim her almost Pyrrhic victory there). Mrs. Clinton wants the delegates from both states seated, which is understandable. She ‘won’ both states.

Mr. Gingrich, who cares deeply about our democratic process as well as the Democratic Party, is saying this would be bad: “Democrats are headed for a trainwreck in campaign ‘08 that threatens to produce a tainted Democratic presidential nominee and, worse, a divisive and delegitimized presidential contest,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.” He added:

Superdelegates are really “politician delegates.” Superdelegates are technically uncommitted party insiders who can vote for whomever they choose. They were created by the party that prides itself on supposedly representing the common man to be the palace guards of the Democratic establishment. Bill Clinton is a superdele-gate, as is Al Gore. They are Democratic Party insiders whose purpose is to put down insurgent campaigns and protect the interests of Democratic politics as usual.

Nothing Gingrich said in the article is wrong and the solution he is advocating, a re-vote in both states, is probably the best possible outcome. I just wish I’m not hearing it from him. Taking advice, any sort of advice, especially a good one, still creates the dilemma of the source you’re getting the advice from.

Newt Gingrich is a disgraced political figure who conducted himself abominably as a public official. He was cynical and hypocritical in both his public and private affairs. He demeaned political discourse in this country the entire time he was a public official. He does not now belong in any discourse concerning what happens with out political system.

Dear Lord:

If You’re listening up in heaven, please grant me this one wish: Let not the Rudy Giuliani misadventures, otherwise known as his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, end. Not just yet. Could You let it run for at least one more week?

The thing is this. I was a newspaper reporter once. And, in that capacity, I covered Rudy when he was mayor of New York City. I think I have in me one dynamite post about Rudy and me. In any case, it’ll be such a shame to have to write the memoirs of those days—all the laughs we had, the tears we shed, such a guy!—after he’s left the campaign trail. What fun is that?

So, God, would You prolong his agony long enough for me to get the post in? No, You don’t have to let him win Florida. You know, Rudy G. has this “Big State” strategy? Just let him do well enough so he thinks he could still win the whole thing. Yeah, You can smite him on Super Tuesday.

I’ll try and get my post in before then.

Thank You, Lord.

Michael