Clinton's super delegate problem

NBC's First Read, which includes the excellent Chuck Todd:

By our count, the Clinton campaign hasn’t publicly announced the support of a new superdelegate since just after February 5. Indeed, since Super Tuesday, Obama has gained 47 new superdelegates, while Clinton has lost seven (including Eliot Spitzer).

I blogged that part earlier this morning, and used it to talk about Obama's momentum. The First Read guys, however, extract a different, and quite excellent point from that factoid:

Does Clinton have a bigger problem on the superdelegate front than folks realize? Why do we think party leaders -- who saw the Democrats lose governorships, state legislatures, and the control of Congress during the Clinton years -- suddenly jump on board the Clinton campaign? Isn't this the reason the Clinton campaign has only been able to keep uncommitted supers from climbing board Obama's bandwagon but they haven't been able to woo a new super to their side in a month? ? Isn't this also an explanation for why the Clinton campaign has done so poorly in the caucuses? The caucuses are made up of the activists who follow this stuff closer and think about things like electability and who can help the party keep Congress, etc. If Clinton's not winning over caucus activists, why should we believe she'll win over a large enough chunk of superdelegates to overcome Obama's pledged delegate lead?

True, of course. All of it. It's why I haven't had too much worries about Clinton getting their coup by super delegate.

Note, both the Obama and Clinton campaign fiercely woed Iowa activists this past weekend. Sometimes, Clinton's efforts verged on the comical. Note this report I received via email from a convention attendee:

I was an Obama delegate at the Dubuque County Convention yesterday in Iowa.  Given the fact that there were over 250 people in attendence for an event that usually gets under 50, it was pretty chaotic.  As per usual, the day began with brief speechs from various local Democratic politicans. These were interrupted, however, so that a special guest could speak to us.  The Clinton campaign had flown in Sean Astin to shill for Hill. He's most famous for playing Sam, Frodo's erstwhile friend, in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He proceeded to tell us all about what a strong women and great leader Hillary was and then went into the now-discredited accounts of her foreign policy accomplishments in Northern Ireland etc. He also returned to the idea of the joint Hillary-Obama dream ticket. But the culmination of his speech was when he talked about how the wonderful thing about the Iowa caucus system was that the county convention was essentially another caucus and that not only the undecided delegates (those pledged to  candidates who have withdrawn) but even the pledged delegates could switch their allegiance.

The Clinton campaign was even robo calling Obama delegates, and had kept a paid campaign organizer in the state working the conventions. Now there's nothing wrong with those efforts, they're all within the rules of the game. But here's the thing --

None of it worked.

Obama picked up all the Edwards defectors and added another delegate at Clinton's expense. So not only did the Clinton campaign completely whiff in its efforts to switch delegates to their side, but they lost some of their own.

And somehow, her campaign thinks they can pull the supers to their side?

That's why the Clinton campaign, at this point, is nothing more than a charade.