Primary calendar becomes an absurdist play, as Michigan Democrats now fight back

The chaos that is reigning in the primary calendar was amusing to follow for a while. But now it is just becoming plain silly. The worse is that the final calendar will likely have a significant effect on who turns out to be the nominee of both parties, which fores us to cover every development.

The latest confusion stems from Michigan, one of the two "rogue states" along with Florida. A few days ago, all Democratic candidates except Chris Dodd and Hillary Clinton withdrew from the Michigan ballot, arguing that the contest was not recognized by the DNC and that the early voting states were being disrespected. This move was a blow to Hillary Clinton, whose campaign was hoping to use Michigan and Florida as firewall states in case everything went badly in Iowa and New Hampshire.

It looks like Michigan Democrats have decided to fight back and have devised a stunning plan to force the candidates back on the state ballot. The legislative leaders of the state are discussing passing a bill that would automatically put any candidate that has publicly discussed his running in public on the ballot, with no possible way out (except writing a statement saying you are not running for President, which I doubt any of the would do! they probably don't care about Iowa's sanctity enough to withdraw from the race). Ballot Access News reports many other states have similar laws, so this does not come out of nowhere -- it just appears very dramatic in the context of the war the MI and FL parties are waging against the candidates and against the DNC.

Getting all the candidates back on the ballot would undoubtedly be good news for Clinton, who is now more than ever likely to win the Michigan primary. Even if it is just a beauty contest, the GOP will have a real primary the same day and Clinton's victory would at least be mentioned in the articles devoted to the Republicans.

• Rasmussen finds McCain strong in a general election

In the Rasmussen match-ups versus the four major republicans, Hillary Clinton is now running significantly better against Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson (she leads them by 7 and 15% respectively in last week's poll) than against John McCain and Mitt Romney in a poll released this morning. This is certainly a counter-intuitive result.

Clinton leads by a single point against McCain (44-43) just as she was last month. Against Romney, Clinton's lead is only six points (47-41). Romney is usually much weaker in general election polls due to his low name recognition. A noticeable internal number, however, is that Clinton's favorable rating stands at 54%, significantly higher than that of her two competitors. But this might give us pause as to who the most electable Republicans are after all.