Alright, someone has to teach me politics.

From someone who knows little about the entire election process It sure appears that the system is really a mess.
I hear everyone saying things are deadlocked or even that Clinton is winning, yet all the numbers say Obama is. Then we have FL and MI who just decided they could hold their primaries whenever they want. And now they are pissed because they are not being counted.
So now the issue is what to do about the two states who didn't follow the rules. Who's do we count, who's don't we count, do we do a re-do etc... Most of that talk is about FLO, it seems MI is being ignored at that point. How can there not be cold hard rules in place? It looks as if we have never had an election before and are just winging it.

Then we have the superdelegates, which I still don't understand exactly what they are, how you get them or what the purpose is. Again, it seems they can't decide what rules they want to go with. Do they count them, do they not count them, do they hold a superdelegate primary, Clinton wants to steal them, but you can't steal them, but you also can't stop anyone from stealing them.

I can say, I really don't understand the process and I could be way off base. But the more I try to follow along the more embarrassed I am about the inability for our country to have a system in place where the rules are not made up as they go.

First off, it is important to realize that it is up to each state how their process will work. For example, your state legislature has no obligation to let you vote. At all. It is up to the legislature to determine their process for selecting delegates to the electoral college. As it is, all states have allowed their citizens to vote. Back when Florida went thru the hanging chad fiasco, the state legislature was on the verge of selecting the delegates rather than go with the results. But they decided even with the controversy that they might face a bigger problem by not even using the questionable outcome. But truth be told, they had every right to do so.

When it comes to the caucus/primary process there are rules. The problem you raised (FL and MI) has nothing to do with them holding them when they want to. Any state can hold them when they want to. There are publicized dates and a very specific process on how those dates are made public and can be changed. The problem is MI and FL arbitrarily changed their dates without following the process. While this sounds like a minor infraction, there are a number of factors which can come into play. Public opinion polls are huge. If the leaders of a party in a state want to make sure their chosen candidate gets the vote, wouldn't it make sense to move the vote to a time when their popularity was at its peak? Party leadership knows exactly who they want. Why is it that Romney dropped out when he did despite picking up a significant number of delegates? Because the Republican leadership wanted McCain and with the major in-fighting in the Democratic party they could get a few months head start on his campaign.

As to "superdelegates", that is a terrible term because it makes it sound like they wield more power of some kind. They don't. However, they are significant. They make up 20% of the delegates at the Democratic convention. They are unpledged, so they don't have to follow any rules as to who they will vote for at the convention. It doesn't get more complicated than that.

The Republican party has similar delegates, but they make up a considerably lower percentage (i.e. 3 come from Missouri of a total of about 54 from the state).

I will detail more tomorrow when I have time.