Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has cited party rules in calling the super delegates “free agents” with respect to their pledge to either Barak Obama of Hillary Clinton. This is ironic, given the assertions by Dean that this primary will “be over by July 1″ and calls by Nancy Pelosi for the supers to pledge already - pushing the supers to pledge whether they are prepared to or not.

More recently, both Dean and Pelosi have backed away from their “hard line” stances, as the specter of campaign lawsuits loom on the horizon.Dean is now citing party rules reflecting the independence of the supers and Pelosi is backing away from her support of the Obama campaign’s June 3 line in the sand.

Watching the Democratic Party repeatedly bungle their own process should be a clear signal to Americans. What you have seen is the party leadership ride roughshod on the Florida and Michigan delegation, rather than work with them. When the threats didn’t produce the desired results, the Democratic Party asserted itself in a way which disenfranchised their constituents in both states. Then, in the resulting mess, the DNC again attempted to force a conclusion and is now responding to pushback from the supers and the campaigns of their own candidates by declaring how much they respect the rules.

These are the same polarizing, obstructionist tactics they have been using in congress when they were in the minority and which have prevented them from accomplishing anything in congress as the majority.

The Democratic Party has been unable to coalesce behind a single candidate and now it is going to the supers. The super delegates are in a bind themselves. They would much rather have a clear popular candidate they could throw their weight behind. As it stands, the super delegates are going to have to reject either the first woman president or the first black president.  This does not bode well for the party in any case, as they have sold themselves as being the party of race and gender.

Michael Barone said something this morning that I thought was the best summary of the Democrat National Committee’s position this election cycle.  I’ll paraphrase.

The DNC leadership is going to be in the unenviable position of having to reject either the first black president in our history or the first woman president in our history.

In either case, there is going to be a lot of emotional backlash associated with this - people just being what they are.

As an extension of that thought, I am curious to see if the rejection of one or the other comes out of a decision relating to the “do over” situation in Michigan and Florida. If the DNC leaves Florida and Michigan alone, not only does Dean have to deal with disenfranchisement allegations, but likely be blamed for rejecting one of the candidates by not doing the vote over. If the DNC does Michigan and Florida over there will be blame for rejecting one or the other candidate, combined with the horrible mismanagement debacle that the do-over will cause by setting a precedent for future election cycles.

To my partisan mind, this shows the core of leftist weakness.  The DNC is nothing more than a club, with state and local chapters. These guys can’t even manage and build consensus in their own club, yet they think they can manage the nation’s business. The back-biting between Dean and some of his subordinates and now this fur ball just underscores that.