I think this may be the first time I've ever felt the need to publicly disagree with the otherwise wonderful Digby. She wrote, tonight:

Regardless of whether you like Clinton or Obama, does anyone think it's a good idea for MSNBC to be rude, snide and dismissive about more than a million and a half Democratic voters in Florida (more than double the turnout from 2004)? Isn't there a little unpleasant history of votes not counting down there?

Now I realize that there are no delegates being awarded and maybe there won't be at the convention either. There are people talking about holding a new caucus later in the process so they do a mulligan in the state. And I also know that many people think Clinton is running some sort of scam and that she'll unfairly try to seat her delegates and that it's inappropriate for her to have a rally in Florida to celebrate "winning" etc, etc. Fine. That's all party politics and it's not what I'm talking about. It will be worked out one way or the other.

My point is that actual human beings voted today. If it is inappropriate for Clinton to declare victory it's also damned inappropriate for every gasbag on television to say that all these votes are completely meaningless. They may not add to the delegate count, but they were cast in good faith by American citizens and they should be treated with respect by these jackasses.

There's plenty to bitch about on MSNBC, but when I had it on tonight, they were showing the vote totals and going to lengths to explain who the voters in Florida had chosen despite the fact that no result beyond that will come from their votes today, making it essentially a straw poll.

And that is the fault of the jackasses who run the Democratic parties in Florida and Michigan. In the never-ending quest to move primaries and caucuses earlier and earlier so their states can limit my options for voting, they decided to hold their primaries before Feburary 5. The DNC, in an attempt to avoid the first 2008 primaries being in 2007, said that only four states could vote before February 5: Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

That wasn't enough for Florida and Michigan, though, so they scheduled their primaries earlier, sure in their belief that since "they are American citizens" and "their votes should be counted," that their delegates would be seated anyway and they'd get to move their primaries early because no one would want to piss them off.

Well, too bad. My state moved its primary up to February 5 to avoid being completely irrelevant, and even that may not make a hill of beans' worth of difference. There will, in effect, be only three GOP contenders and three Democratic contenders when I vote on February 5, nine months before the general election. Just the six primaries that have already happened (including MI and FL) have knocked out two-thirds of the contenders before I even got a chance to vote. If Michigan and Florida had their way, they'd have knocked all but one or two of each party's candidates out weeks before I got to vote.

Forty years ago, LBJ's showing in the New Hampshire primary convinced him to drop out of the race for re-election. That was on March 12, 1968, a full five weeks after February 5, when six primaries have already taken place.

Everyone agree that someone has to stop this out-of-control constant presidential campaign, to try to limit it to election years, but Michigan and Florida decided to bully their way into picking and choosing the candidates before everyone else. The DNC said "no" (as did the RNC, to a smaller extent), and they went ahead and did it anyway. If those votes don't wind up counting for anything, it's because the jackasses that run those state parties decided that their states' votes should count for more than everyone else's, and they got what they deserved by making them count for less.

The primary calendar needs to be fixed, but I'm not having any of this "poor voters, their votes need to be counted" crap. Sorry. Those state parties knew exactly what they were doing. The parties disenfranchised the million and a half voters in Florida tonight, not anyone else. If Florida Democrats are as upset about it as they should be, they should throw their party leaders out on their asses and get some who can act for the good of their state and of the nation. Same goes for Michigan.

I get fewer primary choices because these assholes insisted that they get to pick before me when the national parties, whose nominees they're choosing, said "no." They got what they deserved—and I will not lift one finger to help any candidate in the general election who tries to give them a free pass for sabotaging the primary season.

That means you, Senator Clinton.

Update: Digby has an update today to that item:

It's not a good idea to have MSNBC gasbags scoffing at any legally cast votes in this country for any reason. It's bad for our democracy—they tend to be just a teensy bit untrustworthy and stupid when it comes to this stuff. CNN managed to do it quite well tonight, even with various partisans opining on the meaning of it all. MSNBC could have easily reported the thing straight, including that there were no delegates awarded and that there had been no campaign in the state. The alleged journalists and pundits didn't need to get derisive and snidely say things like "I don't even know what to call this thing the Democrats in Florida did today."

I say call it an election, explain what it means and then STFU.

Again, I disagree. Those voters were disenfranchised by their party's decision to disenfranchise them. Minimizing that does no good, either. It was an election where none of the results matter, and I think MSNBC made that quite clear. Floridians (and Michiganders) should feel angry that their votes didn't count—but it's not MSNBC's fault that they didn't count. It's the fault of their party leaders.

I only had MSNBC on (when watching election coverage), and I heard them say several times that these voters had gone to the polls today to be heard even though nothing would come of it, and discussing what that might mean, not just in horse-race terms. And MSNBC did report it "straight" several times, but they were also right in wondering what to call it. It wasn't a primary because no eligible party delegates were chosen. It wasn't a caucus. It was an election where no one was elected, making it little more than a straw poll.

Pretending otherwise simply is not useful. Sorry, Digby.