There are between 796 and 842 Democratic Super Delegates (depending on whose numbers you wish to accept): Democratic party members and elected officials who vote at the convention but are not subject to obeying the results of caucuses or primaries. Put as baldly as I can: if neither HRC nor BO comes into the convention with the nomination in hand, the Democrats may be in bad baaaaaaaad trouble. If Hillary maintains her current lead in Super Delegates, and is nominated by their convention votes, expect a major rift in some segments of the party over the first African-American who came so close but was denied by the party power-structure. If Barack gets enough Super Delegates to gain the nomination, expect Bill and Hillary to have a hissy-fit and perhaps even walk out (emotionally, if not physically).
Who are these Super Delegates? “The category includes Democratic governors and members of Congress, former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, former vice president Al Gore, retired congressional leaders such as Dick Gephardt, and all Democratic National Committee members, some of whom are appointed by party chairman Howard Dean” (quoted from Tom Curry, of MSNBC.com). Given the folk and categories listed in Curry’s paragraph, I believe—currently—that Hillary will continue to attract the larger share of the SuperDs. Many of them owe at least part of their political success to President Clinton, and he may be calling in those IOUs.
What may change things, however, is an increasing recognition (if there IS an increasing recognition) that she can’t beat John McCain. SuperDs have announced in favor of candidates in the past but have then changed their minds when political reality hit them; most recently, it happened to Howard Dean in 2004, when the officially “unpledged” but Dean-allied SuperDs began to understand that Dean couldn’t beat dubya, and dropped their support. It could happen again this year.
I hope it doesn’t come to that. And it won’t if…BO or HRC can cleanly lock up the nomination before the convention. Right now, that’s unlikely to happen, though it is still mathematically possible. The way the Democrats provide proportional delegates based on one’s success in primaries and caucuses, even with HRC “losing” to BO in state votes, she’s still earning delegates, and if a strong enough majority of SuperDs support her, we could have the Democratic convention equivalent of 2000’s Gore vs. Bush popular vote/electoral vote inversion.
Sometimes it just hurts my head to think of the ways the Democrats can seize defeat while staring in the face of victory. How upset does it make me? It makes me mix metaphors.
On the lighter side: this, from Sunday’s NYTimes—the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), our friends on the front lines at our air fields, have created a blog for folk to be able to yell at them or otherwise communicate, and for a rapport to develop between citizenry and bureaucracy. One early blogger wrote:
“Ever since you started X-raying our shoes, I’ve been forced to carry all my plastic explosives in my pants, which I find most inconvenient.”
It’s good that a sense of humor can survive even the most serious situations. I’ll try to hold on to that thought when I think about SuperDs.
Next time, we begin to look at some of the potential vice presidential candidates, should either Obama or Clinton get the presidential nomination.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I assume you heard the end of the last (I think it was the last) CNN debate where both BO and HRC were asked directly whether each would consider having the other as VP if they got the nomination. Both hedged, but in more open-to-the-idea terms than I'd expected. I've heard pundits claim that HRC might have BO as a VP (acronym overload!) because he'd broaden her appeal, but that BO believes HRC is too divisive a candidate to be an appropriate VP. Not sure about that. I've also heard a lot of vague discussion of how the party's "neutral elder statesmen" (I think that means Gore, Reid, and Pelosi, among others, who haven't declared for anyone yet) might "broker a deal" at the convention if, as you say, there is no clear winner based on the primaries & caucuses. I sort of assumed that "broker a deal" meant "make them agree to share a ticket as Pres & VP." I also have several friends who like Bill Richardson for VP, but I've no idea how realistic that is.
Sorry for such a long comment!
Post a Comment