Bring in the Lawyers to Decide the Democratic Nomination!
Wed Feb 20, 2008 at 08:00:04 AM PDT
If anyone thought that the voters, not the lawyers, were going to decide the Democratic nomination. Think again. In today's New York Times: "Your Conscience or Your Constituency?", Ron Klain posits how the nearly 800 unpledged "party leader and elected official" delegates — the so-called superdelegates — will vote, concluding that the matter is extremely complex. He suggests two frames of reference:
1:"vote their conscience" (The Clinton position); 2: "vote in accord with the people’s wishes" (Obama position).
Then he proceeds to delve into the "mix of philosophy and expediency" and the deep complexity of the issue. Klain states:
"If the path for a superdelegate who wants to vote her own preference is somewhat twisted, the path before a superdelegate who wants to follow 'the will of the people' is positively convoluted."
He asks: "Imagine you are a superdelegate because you are a Democratic member of Congress from California, and you want to follow the wishes of the voters. Which voters? The voters of your own Congressional district, who perhaps voted for Senator Obama, or the voters in the California primary as a whole, who voted for Senator Clinton? Or perhaps you take a national perspective. Will you ratify the preference of a majority of the pledged delegates (which is looking like it will be Senator Obama) or the preference of a majority of the popular votes cast in the primary season (which could easily be Senator Clinton)? Which of these four tests is the right one for a superdelegate who wants to respect the 'will of the people'?"
Klain would like us to think these issues are so complex and thorny that any decision by a Super Delegate would be reasonable. He posits: "Beyond the question of which people’s will the superdelegates would follow, there is also the question of when that popular will should be ascertained." He suggests that if a superdelegate believes that his or her constituents preferred one candidate in February when their state’s primary was held, but a different candidate when the convention occurs in August then maybe the delegate should factor that into consideration.
Interesting, The Clintons' website designed to obfuscate the Democratic scramble for delegates www.delegatehub.com, joins Klain's chorus on the complexity of the delegates' decision:
"As more voters make their choice for the Democratic nomination, there is growing interest in the facts and myths about the race to reach 2208 delegate votes - the number required for a candidate to secure the nomination with Florida and Michigan included. The Obama campaign is claiming, without precedent or justification, that automatic delegates (commonly referred to as 'super delegates') should switch to Sen. Obama en masse based on arbitrary metrics, with the aim of tilting the delegate balance in his favor. The fact is: no automatic delegate is required to cast a vote on the basis of anything other than his or her best judgment about who is the most qualified to be president." www.delegatehub.com
What we see in Klain's analysis and The Clintons' delegatehub.com is an attempt to suggest that only the lawyers can help the Super-Delegates out of the paralysis of complexity they must surely find themselves in. This is creating a "plausible scenario" to allow the Super Delegates, as a quasi "House of Lords" to overrule the winner of primary after primary. If these arguments hold sway, The Clintons can achieve a delegate coup that they cannot seem to win at the voting booth.
In reality, the message tor the Super Delegates should be quite simple: no one elected you, the Super Delegate, to decide the election. The voters are "the deciders." The primaries are the vehicle for deciding the election. No amount of obfuscation or suggestion of the metaphysical complexity of the issue makes any difference. We cannot allow Super Delegates to be "the deciders" under the shroud of phony complexity.
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