Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean has a plan that will produce a nominee before his party's convention in August, avoiding what he fears could be a "really ugly and nasty" fiasco.Democratic leaders have begun complaining he has bungled the party's nominating process and alienated voters because of his failure to engineer a political compromise in the DNC's ill-advised decision to strip Florida and Michigan of all its delegates. But Mr. Dean, whose polls show the party's internecine warfare is hurting its chances in November, has been talking to party bigwigs about a deal and now says the delegations will be seated before the nominating roll of the states is called.
The conventional wisdom says the battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will go all the way to the convention. But Mr. Dean wants it over well before that, and possibly before the last of the 10 remaining primaries are completed in June. ...