The events in the power struggle over the national nomination system for President continues on its inevitable path this week.  The national Democratic Committee (a free association of independent and politically sovereign State political parties) threatened the Florida State party with excluding its nominees to the National Convention for nominating the selection of Democrats nationwide to the Presidency… and after some consideration and discussion locally in Florida it was decided to tell the national group to stuff it:

From the NY Times:  PEMBROKE PINES, Fla., Sept. 23 — The Florida Democratic Party announced Sunday that it would move ahead with its plan to hold its presidential primary on Jan. 29 despite the national party’s decision to block the state delegation from the 2008 Democratic convention.

State party leaders said that even if none of the state’s delegates were seated at next summer’s Democratic presidential convention, the earlier primary would still help determine the nominee.

As they say, ‘That is that’.  The National Committee can do nothing more to try to enforce its will as it has no legal power to do anything other than threaten (hollowly) to not seat delegates from Florida.  The Florida state Democrats have it figured out correctly: even if the National Committee follows through they will still have vastly more influence on the nominee of their party by going early because voters in other states will see how the candidates actually compete in the type of states they must win in order to take the Presidency in November 2008. And after all the charges of voter intimidation etc. following events in Florida the last two Presidential elections does anyone really think that when it comes down to the Nominating Convention in the Summer that the votes of Florida’s Democrat voters will be disenfranchised by having their votes literally taken away from them?  No Presidential candidate who hoped to win the support of that critical state would dare to follow through with that.  Neither would the rest of the nation’s Democrats in that moment as they look forward determined to beat the Republicans and regain the Presidency.

So which State will be next to move their Primary forward to match or beat Florida? Given the schedule if none move then Florida will set the tone going into the most critical day of voting and will have a solid chance of choosing the nominee for each party. That’s great for Florida but much less so for other states of large stature like California,Texas, or New York. Somehow one doubts this mess has settled just yet.