To win the Democratic Presidential nomination, you need to have 2,159 delegates vote in favor of you in Boston in August of 2004.
Most delegates are awarded in state primaries and caucuses. The delegates for a state are allocated among the contending candidates on a roughly proportional representation basis, with candidates that fail to get at least 15% support in the appropriate subdivision of the state, getting no delegates at all.
In addition to these delegates, there are 796 superdelegates, who hold elected office or other high positions in the party.
Most years, superdelegates are, like the electoral college, a historical curiousity that ratified as clear primary and caucus season winner. This year could be different.
Superdelegates, of course, can only do so much. A candidate that wins every superdelegate (hard to imagine in and of itself), the candidate has to come up with 1,363 ordinary delegates.
Campaigns like Kerry, Edwards, Sharpton, Braun and Kucinich can't be saved by superdelegates. The last three will be lucky to get even a handful of delegates before dropping out. Kerry and Edwards will be far off the mark unless the political environment changes dramatically.
The question is, how can superdelegates influence the campaigns of Clark, Dean, Lieberman and Gephardt?
Given political loyalties, one might expect that Lieberman or Gephardt, both veterans of the process with personal relationships with many superdelegates have an edge.
Dean could win many superdelegates, because his message resonates so strongly with the activist base, or one could even imagine Clark winning superdelegates given the fact that it was Bill Clinton's quasi-endorsement that encouraged him to run, and given that many perceive him to be most electable.
I have a hard time seeing loyalties prevailing over electability concerns in the case of Lieberman. There is widespread agreement that he did poorly in the 2000 campaign. And, on the other hand, I could easily imagine Gephardt winning disproportionate support, after his history as de facto party leader for many years, if he is close enough to benefit from the gesture, which is hardly certain.
Most likely, a brokered convention will have to decide between Dean and Clark. If so, Dean, who is at least a life long Democrat with wide support in the base wins. But, in a brokered convention between Dean and Gephardt, I think the superdelegates could easily push Gephardt over the top.
What do you think?