There's a whole lot that's wrong with the presidential primary system, but the DNC attempted to provide a slight improvement this year by moving Nevada and South Carolina forward. Part of the thinking was that it would compensate for the whiteness of Iowa and New Hampshire by bringing in Nevada's Hispanics and the large number of black voters in the SC Democratic Party. It would keep the nominating process in small states, so that the election wouldn't just fall to whoever could raise enough millions to hire an army of organizers and bomb a big media market with ads. The continued prominence of Iowa and New Hampshire are pretty much indefensible, of course, and I hope that gets revisited next time.
So the DNC's decision to punish Florida if it keeps trying to leapfrog the schedule is the right one. Florida knew that they were breaking the schedule when they moved up, and they did it anyway. At this point, the DNC can either threaten to deprive Florida of delegates, or watch the whole primary calendar disintegrate as states leapfrog each other and schedule surprise primaries for the day after tomorrow.
