If you thought it was going to be simple with Florida, well then you have a really bad memory. That state’s Democratic Party has declared, on behalf of its voters, that Florida doesn’t want to vote again. Once was quite enough. Even if it was a sort of a pantomime equivalent of voting, in which actual ballots were cast but the results were determined ahead of time to be meaingless (which didn’t stop Hillary Clinton from showing up and acting as if she had won the sweepstakes). They were being punished by the national party for having held its primary early and the state’s poohbahs have tossed the ball back over the fence — like those mimes playing tennis in Blow-Up.

“This doesn’t mean that Democrats are giving up on Florida voters,” the FDP assured everyone in a memo. “It means that a solution will have to come from the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee, which is scheduled to meet again in April.”

As much as that committee, headed by DNC leader Howard Dean, would like to toss that imaginary ball to someone else, the math finally frames the debate and gives us all an out (even those of us who didn’t do so well in math): Obama has more candidates and it’s impossible for Hillary to catch up. He also has a greater percentage of the popular vote and, barring a bizarre and complete turnaround, the equivalent of all Obama supporters staying home for all the remaining primaries, there is no way she can catch up there, either. Her argument that the Democratic nominee needs to win Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida to take the White House means a whole lot less when polls continue to show Obama beating McCain more handily, even in those states, than she would. What, Hillary supporters are going to stay home in November if she doesn’t get the nomination? Never happen. Whereas a good number of Obama’s troops, many of them first time voters, would certainly have reason to think the game rigged if the candidate with the most votes and delegates somehow didn’t get the nomination. Kind of reminds you of the 2000 presidential election, when the candidate with the most votes lost…

There is nothing wrong with representatives making a momentous decision as long as they truly represent the will of the people. Anyone who watched HBO’s John Adams last night got a good historical reminder of how the craven King-fearing representatives of some colonies almost kept us from fighting for freedom. (If you did miss the first two episodes of this bracing series, it’s being repeated on hundreds of HBO spin-offs as you read this, including HBO En Espanol. Watching our founding fathers arguing the fine points of the Declaration of Independence in Spanish makes me feel like I have entered one of Lou Dobbs’ nightmares.)

As much as I enjoyed the series more bold-faced portrayals — Paul Giamatti’s dyspeptic Adams, Tom Wilkinson’s rascally Benjamin Franklin — I was really taken with Broadway actor Stephen Dillane’s quiet take on Thomas Jefferson. It’s how Montgomery Clift might have played him: so still you have to pay attention. When you have the right ideas you don’t have to scream and strut. Something for all presidential contenders to remember.