GOV. ED RENDELL (D-PA): The popular vote is, to me, a much fairer indicia than the pledged delegates because the pledged delegates are elected in a very undemocratic way.

(End audiotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Do you agree with that?

DR. DEAN: Well, no, I don't. First of all, I don't agree with it. And secondly, look, we have a set of rules. My job here is not to side with one candidate or the other and talk about pledged delegates or superdelegates or any of that stuff. My job is to take the rules that everybody started with and enforce the rules without fear or favor of any candidate. The--somebody's going to lose this with 49 percent of the delegates in Denver, and that person has to believe that they were treated fairly if--otherwise, we can't win. Look, John McCain is a weak candidate. He's wrong on Iraq, as far as the American people are concerned. We don't want to stay there for a hundred years. He's wrong on the economy; it wasn't the mortgage holders that, that, whose fault this was. He's wrong on healthcare. We should have health insurance for all our kids. He is not a strong candidate.

The only thing that's going to beat us is if we're not unified. And my, in order to be unified, both the losing candidate and the winning candidate have to feel like the system was fair. So Senator Rendell may say--I mean, Governor Rendell may not like the rules, but the rules are what we started with. Most of them have been in place for the last 25 years. That's what we've got to go by, whether you like the rules or you don't like the rules.

Just like that, the rhetoric of eight years is tossed out the window. Apparently Howard Dean doesn't actually believe that the 2000 election was stolen, or at least he doesn't believe it today because it doesn't work for him.

Its interesting that Howard Dean popped his head up at all, and now its clear why--his political career is hanging by a thread. The one true thing he said was that the Democrats can't win if they aren't unified, and they aren't.

Both candidates have now sent clear messages--threats actually. The results in Pennsylvania emphasized Hillary's assertion that Obama is a boutique presidential aspirant. The Al Sharpton-led protests of blacks against the acquittals of officers charged in the shooting of Sean Bell, and Jeremiah Wright's disastrous (for Obama) National Press Club address that characterized criticism of his remarks as criticism of the black church, warn Democrat party officials that they will lose the crucial black vote if they don't give black people what they feel entitled too.

Dean was speaking to the super-delegates, but not loud enough to be heard over the Pennsylvania election results or the inflammatory rhetoric of a couple of black pastors. This past weekend's events virtually guaranteed that Dean's June deadline will be ignored, because not politically-astute super-delegate is going to take a position here that could doom their political careers. They will wait for a winner or a better bribe.

McCain is a virtual shoo-in at this point, barring devastating revelations and/or mistakes, and if he does win, the recriminations within the Democrat party are going to be incredibly severe. Usually the losing candidate gets blamed, but considering that this was supposed to be a Democrat year and no Democrat will ever accept the proposition that their ideas were unpalatable to the American electorate, its far more likely that they'll blame the disunity within the party, and then they'll blame Howard Dean for not managing the process better.

Dean will be out as DNC chairman with no place to go, and that's why he's on Meet the Press--trying to save his political career.