We have read a lot of hyper-ventilated lecturing lately about unpledged delegates and the necessity that they sanction the "will of the voters" by simply ratifying the nomination of the candidate who has the greatest number of pledged delegates. The language is dire: overruling the primary process, or kos writing today that barring some epic Obama collapse, HRC's
only chance will be coup by super delegate -- cajoling the supers to abandon the will of the voters.
Get out, Hillary, before you destroy the party by your naked, wicked ambition.
All nonsense of course. First, why should she abandon her pursuit? Neither she nor Obama will have the majority needed to claim the nomination come August, and she is just as entitled as he is to seek the delegates she needs elsewhere. I suspect that by then, the two candidates will be well within a hundred delegates of each other, and Clinton plausibly will have the greater of the popular vote. Would a pledged, non-majority delegate lead of ONE by Obama entitle him to the coronation of the supers?
But for a complicated interplay of rules, geography, timing, race, gender and methodology, there really isn't a will of the voters to sanction. I cannot imagine that very many of the laudably fervent Obama supporters would agree that he should just walk away graciously if, come August, it were he that was behind by a mere 75 delegates, with neither candidate having a majority and after having waged such a transformational campaign. You would understandably, and rightly, be exhorting Obama to roll up his sleeves, stick out his elbows, get in the mix for the unpledged delegates and win this thing!
Second, and most importantly, according to the RULES that elsewhere to seek delegates is among the unpledged delegates. It is not a coup, it is playing by the rules as they exist (something the Obama supporters are so keen about when it comes to playing by rules that benefit Obama (see Florida and Michigan)). At least kos acknowledges this critical fact, albeit in an off-handed way. In fact, surveying the landscape last year (or even after Iowa), it would not be an implausible strategy, especially if one believed that one could garner the support of, say 500 unpledged delegates, to try to win enough states otherwise to get to 1,525 delegates (and ignore the rest, again especially if you see an election calendar that is unfavorable both as to methodology (caucus) and race. (The caucus system is exclusionary, non-representative and fraught with barriers to entry. And, like it or not, defensible or not, African-American voters have voted monolithically in favor of Obama, in percentages so high that it is virtually impossible for Clinton to prevail in states with a significant percentage of black voters.)
(This is why all of this hand-wringing about dissing sates is so silly. Why should she waste scarce resources in states where she has little chance to win? These are mostly smaller states, or states not essential to a Democratic win in a general election. Whatever the long-term merits of the 50-state strategy, candidates (Democratic and Republican) for decades have been ignoring (and downplaying the significance of) states they had no chance to win. Does that mean George Bush dissed California? Or Al Gore dissed Idaho (or whatever state he failed to visit or spend any money in)? As I recall, it was in the 2006 election that kos and others laughed at (with some gleeful appreciation: "Yes, please, waste your money!!") the absurdity of the Republican campaign committees spending money in states where its candidates simply were not going to win -- like the New Jersey Senate race. And the tempest being stirred by the Obama campaign about Clinton's comparative reference to Mississippi is pandering politics at its classic worst. In fact, Mississippi has infamously earned its comparative place as the worst in many categories, and if Obama were the speaker of truth to power or whatever the consequences, he would agree. Most of us who post here, for good reasons, wouldn't even think about living in Mississippi. Does that mean that everyone who lives in Mississippi is a redneck moron? No. It just means that, in general, the state has not done a very good job hitting benchmarks of a free and civil society. Unlike Iowa, which ranks sixth across a measure of 44 livability factors, Mississippi does, indeed, rank at the bottom among the 50 states.)
By the logic of almost everyone who has so vehemently defended the rules of the game this election season, it would be patently unfair to change those rules now, in the middle of the game. By those rules (which I need not defend), nearly 800 unpledged delegates can vote as they please and it is not only appropriate to seek their support, it would be stupid not to. And one could have reasonably built an election strategy based on this very oddity. Again, I might not like it, and I certainly can think of many arguments otherwise, but it is similarly not a coup, or not overruling the will of the voters, to allow one-third of Texas' delegates to be chosen by caucus (people voting twice), where the certain majority of those voting preferred Clinton. Nor, as many of you have argued, not a coup to disregard the primary vote in Washington, although 3 times as many people voted and it arguably more clearly reflected the will of the voters. As, I suppose, it is not overruling the will of the voters in Florida, where all candidates were on the same playing field and through no fault of wither the voters or the Democratic Party of Florida (the primary date was set by the Republican-controlled legislature and Governor, so far as I have read -- I admittedly did not follow then and do not remember now the debate).
It's time for some of us to get off our high horses (and maybe work to reform the election process). If Clinton wins, even if on the backs of unpledged delegates, she will have won fair and square. (Oh, but for the negative attacks, the likes of which THE WORLD HAS NEVER SEEN.) Same goes for Obama.