How to profit from wrongdoing.

In the race for the Democratic nomination for president, the national party saw a scramble where states moved up primary dates to try and gain additional influence (OK, the Republican state committees did this, too). The Democrats set an iron-clad rule that the traditional Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries would remain the first contests--and Florida and Michigan violated that rule. The response by the national party? They gave the states fair warning, then stripped the states of their representation at this summer's Democratic convention.

I have two thoughts about this. To those who whine about how it's not fair to those voters, they're the ones who didn't raise a fuss about the party leadership scheduling these things--not to mention they selected these genius leaders. The party has rules, the rules were clearly disclosed, and the parties in Michigan and Florida broke them. Serves them right!

But my other thought is this: these states moved the primaries to gain an advantage and increase their influence in the nomination. The penalty was to discourage this, and they did it anyways. So now, with the race for the nomination so close, there's a movement afoot to have a "do-over" for these states. In the end, their manipulations to get an added influence are now likely to succeed.

Perverse, no?

CDs listened to today:

• Juraj Filas: Sonata For Trombone And Piano (At the end of the century)
• Nikolai Myaskovsky: Symphony No. 3
• Smithereens: Blow Up
• Bill Watrous: The Tiger Of San Pedro
• Christopher Rouse: Symphony No. 1
• Urge Overkill: Exit The Dragon
• Alfred Schnittke: Symphony No. 8