Michigan's move of their primary up to January 15th has angered the national parties, but seems likely to stand. It could be just the boost Senator John McCain's campaign has been looking for, writes Mark Hemingway for National Review Online:

Of course, McCain won largely due to unusual circumstances and Michigan's lax primary laws. Michigan has an open primary. The state doesn't keep track of voter affiliation, so anyone can vote in either primary merely by requesting either a Republican or Democratic ballot. In 2000, the Republican and Democratic primaries happened to occur on different dates. That year, the GOP primary was flooded with support for McCain, coming from an unlikely source -- Democrats. "Engler, who was a lightning rod conservative, came out and said Michigan was going to be the firewall for Dubya, and so all the independents and Oakland County women and Democrats came out," is how Bill Ballenger, editor of well-regarded Inside Michigan Politics newsletter, described McCain's victory to me last year.

Eerily similar circumstances may just be shaping up again; the national Democratic party is threatening to pull out of the Michigan primary if they hold it in advance of New Hampshire. According to party rules, the DNC can take away all of the state's convention delegates if Michigan doesn't play by their preferred calendar. The RNC can only take away half of the state's delegates -- which may still provide enough of an incentive for the state to hold the GOP primary early, even if the DNC ends up holding the state caucuses on a later date.

"We don't want a repeat of 2000 when we had Democrats and independents raiding our Republican primary because they didn't have any other contest to vote in," Ballenger told National Review Online regarding Michigan's upcoming primary date.

Read the rest at the link above. In 2000, it didn't matter so much that Democrats had a different primary date, but rather that they had no real contest. Gore had the nomination locked up and Bradley wasn't about to fight for it, so Democrats (and independents who lean their way) had a free shot to bloody up both Engler and Bush, and they took it. The Democrats have a race of their own this time, which will cut back on the number of crossover voters - which also explains McCain's relative weakness in states that permit it versus his strength in 2000, especially New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Yet, if the DNC prevails and Michigan Democrats opt for later caucuses, the scenario Hemingway envisions could possibly materialize. It's a long shot, of course, but so is the McCain campaign at this point.