There has been quite a bit of discussion on many blogs and other media about what to do with the Florida and Michigan delegate mess.
Although I still think that a policy of “the rules are the rules; to change them retroactively would be unfair” is the best policy, it seems increasingly unlikely that political pressures would permit such a stance.
As a result, there are all sorts of schemes proposed on how to “fairly” seat the delegates from those two states. They range from letting the primaries and delegate rules stand as-is, without sanction (significant benefit to Clinton); to counting FL and MI delegates as half-votes; to enforcing FL and MI delegates to vote either a 50/50 split, or according to the national popular vote.
I offer one other idea: Permit Michigan and Florida Democrats to pick their delegations in the usual way, seat the delegates, permit them full votes…but do NOT require the individual delegates to be bound to vote for the candidate they would normally be pledged to.
To the extent that Obama may have been disadvantaged by actually honoring the pledge to not run in states violating party rules, he would have the opportunity to woo over a few of Clinton’s delegates, much as he likely would have fared a little bit better in those states, if he had actually campaigned there. And, of course, Hillary, could campaign to protect her delegates…or even sway a few delegates that would otherwise go to Obama.
It’s not as clean as holding a new vote, and changing the rules mid-campaign is still unfair to Obama…but this would have the advantage of allowing a reflection of popular sentiment in those two states, while giving Obama a chance to do something akin to retroactive campaigning in those two states.