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Former Michigan Gov Blanchard says DNC has lost its way
The Associated Press; Battle Creek Enquirer, March 29, 2008

LANSING — Former Michigan Gov. James Blanchard said today that the Democratic National Committee is so focused on punishing Michigan and Florida for moving up their primaries that it has lost sight of winning the November election.

The DNC stripped the two states of their national convention delegates for breaking the rules. Neither has been able to come up with a way acceptable to the DNC, state party leaders and the campaigns of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama that would get the delegates seated.

Blanchard, a Clinton supporter, said the Republican National Committee handled the matter better than the DNC. The RNC stripped the two states of only half their GOP delegates and applied the same punishment to New Hampshire and other states that moved up their GOP elections.

“They have put their rules ahead of common sense, of electing a Democratic president, of the voters in two major states,” Blanchard said of the DNC members during the taping of public television’s “Off the Record” program. “They’re treating the rules like they’re the U.S. Constitution or the Ten Commandments. They’ve lost their way.”

DNC spokesman Damien LaVera says the DNC is continuing to work with Michigan and Florida to find a way to get the delegates seated that meets party rules. He doesn’t think enforcing the rules is endangering a Democratic victory in November.

“Not only are Democrats energized heading into November’s election, but we are confident that when Michigan voters will see that the real John McCain is out of touch with economic challenges facing working families and has no plan for Iraq, they will choose one of our great candidates,” LaVera said of the GOP candidate.

Clinton won the Jan. 15 primary. The New York senator supports holding another election in Michigan, although efforts to do that so far have failed.

The Obama campaign has said the state’s 128 pledged delegates should be split evenly between the two candidates, even though the Illinois senator and several other candidates took their names off the ballot, forcing their supporters to vote for Uncommitted.