The attempted manipulation of the Florida and Michigan primary contests by the Clinton campaign, with ample help from devious Republicans who wish to fragment the party's hard drive and a serendipitous boost from the networks who love the bloody battle, threatens to pollute the Democratic party with rancor and disillusionment. For a long time to come.
Millions of young Americans, primarily energized to the party by Barack Obama, will not get behind HRC if she succeeds in wresting the nomination by strong-arm tactics, deceit, and midstream rule changes brought under a faux call "to not disenfranchise the voters of Florida and Michigan". As her husband, Bill, was fond of saying, "that dog don't hunt".
Party nominations have always played to the insiders and the party insiders made the rules (this would include members of the Clinton camp) and now they are desperate to figure out a way to cry foul and get some votes by hook or crook. Actually, they prefer to have others cry foul, and once fed a punch line, many pundits are only too eager to play along. But we digress.
Back to those young, newly christened party members. If this plays out as a nasty comeuppance to the Obama campaign "he's too young and inexperienced to play the dirty game like we (and the Republicans) play it", then come November, a large chunk of them won't vote for HRC or McGruff the Crime Dog, who just attached himself to a President who believes in torture and wants Congress to make it legal again. The also won't vote for Ralph Nader, nor Ron Paul, nor the billionaire from NYC should he decide to jump out of the cake and make it rain. No, they'll walk away from what they will now perceive, as many of them perceived before, the bullshit arena of cow-shit politics. And this will send McGruff the Crime Dog to the White House where he can extract the revenge of the people (which includes himself). My friends, five years of solitude, one hundred years of war.
If these shenannigans do come to pass then to HRC's and/or McGruff's chagrin, they'll discover that the neophytes won't go away forever. They may go away quietly. THIS TIME. But when they do come back, and THEY WILL COME BACK, it'll be to take America away from the party neanderthals and make the process more transparent and fair to those who choose to play the game.