Terry McAuliffe, circa 2004, as DNC Chair: “The Rules Are the Rules.”

Mark Nickolas has done an interesting bit of research (posted Friday on DailyKos) simply by reading former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe’s book, What a Party! It seems Mr.McAuliffe held a very different opinion about the necessity of the party chairman holding firm to the Democratic party rules concerning the scheduling of primaries, and the penalties that were established to prevent states from moving their primaries ahead of New Hampshire’s.

The excerpt follows (McAuliffe is speaking first-person.):

“I’m going outside the primary window,” [Michigan Sen. Carl Levin] told me definitively.

“If I allow you to do that, the whole system collapses,” I said. “We will have chaos. I let you make your case to the DNC, and we voted unanimously and you lost.”

He kept insisting that they were going to move up Michigan on their own, even though if they did that, they would lose half their delegates. By that point Carl and I were leaning toward each other over a table in the middle of the room, shouting and dropping the occasional expletive.

“You won’t deny us seats at the convention,” he said.

“Carl, take it to the bank,” I said. “They will not get a credential. The closest they’ll get to Boston will be watching it on television. I will not let you break this entire nominating process for one state. The rules are the rules. If you want to call my bluff, Carl, you go ahead and do it.”

“We glared at each other some more, but there was nothing much left to say. I was holding all the cards and Levin knew it.”

Of course now, McAuliffe is chair of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president, and has a more elastic view of the rules. One might call it even a more Clintonian view of the rules. Although Clinton agreed not to campaign in either state (both censured by the DNC, their delegations being disallowed by DNC rules), she left her name on the ballot in both Michigan and Florida, thereby “winning” the most votes. So let us imagine current DNC Chairman Howard Dean taking a page from McAuliffe’s book (page #325, to be exact) and telling him today, in no uncertain terms:

“Terry, take it to the bank. Michigan and Florida will not get a credential. The closest they’ll get to Denver will be watching it on television. The rules are the rules.”