You can argue that the Michigan primary was irrelevant for the Democrats, since the only serious candidate on the ballot was Hillary Clinton. But the Florida vote in late January was different. Even though the candidates didn't show up to campaign, their surrogates were there and the ballot listed the candidates themselves. It was a genuine election.
Clinton won it. Obviously, she now wants those delegates counted. If they are she will lead Obama, or come close, in the national delegate count. The only way Obama leads is not to acknowledge the large states of Michigan and Florida. Imagine a US map without them. Imagine wining the Democratic nomination and then trying to stir up party enthusiasm in states whose primary votes you have dismissed.
I wrote in January that the same Democratic National Committee that made such trouble over the highly doubtful claims of a few supposed uncounted votes in the 2000 presidential election was now itself proposing to disenfranchise the million or more voters who turned up to vote in the Florida Presidential Primary of 2008. The DNC contention is that the federal party apparatus and its rules are more important than a state's right to hold a primary and the voters' right to vote. Regardless of where you stand on that (I happen to think it is shows what folly this overly-long primary season is), it is not going to go down well with the voters themselves.
Now Sen. Nelson of Florida is trying hard to make that point to a very stolid DNC Chairman Dean. http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/sen.-bill-nelson-paints-florida-train-wreck-scenario-2008-03-06.html
It is possible that neither Clinton nor Obama will arrive in Denver with enough delegates to win the nomination. That could lead to a crucial credentials fight at the convention and a key tactical vote on whether to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations. The decision in a split convention would fall to the uncommitted superdelegates and some leftover Edwards and other delegates. The outcome would probably predict the ultimate nominee's victory. But it would leave wounds.
Here, for free, is Chapman's compromise solution: Retroactively adopt the Republican's formula for punishing states that don't conform to the party's primary schedule and dock only half of Florida's (and probably Michigan's) delegates, and assign the proportions according to the numbers of votes each candidate got. That way the issue more or less goes away and the voters in both states will be happy. Hillary will get a boost, albeit a modest one, and a contentious, divisive issue will be avoided.
At that point, with what may be roughly equal delegate counts for Clinton and Obama, the nomination will fall to a convention brokered by the superdelegates. That is fine and exactly the role the superdelegates were created for. (The Democratic rules are inferior to the Republicans' in most ways, I think, but superior on this one.) The governors, senators and other top elected officials and each state's top party officers should have a say on who leads them. Fifty to a hundred years ago most party nominations were decided by such veterans.