clipped from www.dailykos.com

Dean: "We have tried to negotiate with the Florida party and the Michigan party for a long time and basically been told they're not interested in negotiating...We're not interested in disenfranchising Florida and Michigan voters; they're important to us. But what we are saying is we have to be respectful of the other 48 states who stuck by the rules, played by the rules. And we most certainly have to be respectful of the candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who knew what the rules were...and changing the rules halfway through the game is incredibly unfair to both of those candidates and frankly would split the Democratic Party so we're not going to do it."