John Aravosis, AMERICAblog:

Now Hillary says Obama won't be the winner even if he reaches 2,029 delegates

Honestly, go ahead. At this point, I'd love nothing better than to see an all-out war in the Democratic party, instigated by Hillary and Bill Clinton. The DNC, God bless 'em, is afraid to take Hillary on. The Democrats in Congress are afraid to take her on. The superdelegates across the board are afraid to take her on. We are a party of fear. …

I am not a fan of the Clinton campaign or strategy, and I believe that Democrats anywhere should feel free to take sides, advocate for or against the candidate of their choice, and declare or not declare intentions.

But not the Democratic National Committee.

The DNC is the structure of the Democratic Party. As such, it exists solely to manage the party's business, advocate for its goals, and promote the election of its candidates. The party members must choose their candidates for every elected office, by whatever means is prescribed for that office.

For the party hierarchy to "take on a candidate" of that party is the antithesis of what the party stands for. It's ridiculous for Aravosis to have complained for the past two months about the Clinton campaign's alleged "strategy" to thwart the popular vote by "stealing" the nomination via unelected "superdelegates,"¹, and then turn around today and imply that the DNC should use its same unelected status to dismiss a candidate with about 48% of the party's delegates.

The whole battle over Florida and Michigan is because the party chose to punish states that held primaries before Feburary 5, and those two states chose to do it anyway, and unlike past election cycles, the party is sticking to the agreed-upon rules and punishing those states. You can reasonably argue that the rules didn't require stripping 100% of delegates, and you can reasonably argue that the party should not listen to its members protestations now that those rules should be changed at the end of the election cycle they were designed to govern.

But given that there is a controvery at all, because the DNC has not caved to pressure to ignore the rules, you can't reasonably argue that the DNC is "afraid" to take on those who violate the party's rules as decided by its members. Once the party's members have decided upon their presidential candidate—at the convention if need be—then the DNC will fully support that nominee and "take on" those who attack him or her.

To "take on" one candidate or another before that is exactly the opposite of a democratic national party.

1. I would agree with the Clinton campaign that "automatic delegates" is a better term, because a superdelegate vote isn't worth more than a pledged delegate vote—it just comes from someone who wasn't elected as a delegate by a state primary or caucus. They're not "super," but changing the term in the middle of the cycle smells like trying to redefine the debate, so I'm not going to win that argument. ↩

2. Don't like the people who made the rules? Tough. Decisions are made by those who show up. People cared enough about the party's direction in 2005 to fight hard to get Howard Dean elected as DNC chairman, and if they don't like the delegate system, they should have fought to get it changed. If they didn't think it would matter, they were wrong. ↩