Wash. Post: Influential Democrats Waiting to Choose Sides
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's trio of victories over Sen. Barack Obama last week appears to have convinced a sizable number of uncommitted Democratic superdelegates to wait until the end of the primaries and caucuses before picking a candidate, according to a survey by The Washington Post.
Many of the 80 uncommitted superdelegates who were contacted over the past several days said they are reluctant to override the clear will of voters. But if Clinton (N.Y.) and Obama (Ill.) are still seen as relatively close in the pledged, or elected, delegate count in June, many said, they will feel free to decide for themselves which of the candidates would make a stronger nominee to run against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the fall.
"You're going to see a lot of delegates remaining uncommitted," said Rep. Mike Doyle (Pa.), who has not endorsed either candidate. "There's a sense that this is going to Denver not resolved."
Who are the superdelegates?
The potential power of these superdelegates to decide the race has conjured up fears of party bosses repairing to smoke-filled rooms to pick a nominee, but the reality is far different. These delegates have never met as a group, and the first time they do may be on the floor of the convention, along with more than 4,000 pledged delegates.
By one analysis provided to The Post, half of the uncommitted delegates are elected officials, almost a third come from states that have not yet held primaries or caucuses, a third are women, and about a fifth are black or Hispanic. Others say there is no real pattern to who has taken sides and who remains on the fence.
There isn't uniformity in the definition of a superdelegate in the article. Many superdelegates see the power of their vote as being consistent and equal with those of pledged delegates, while others argue they truly have superpowers. Here's a sampling of different viewpoints.
Jenny Greenleaf, a Democratic National Committee member from Oregon, is one of these reluctant powerbrokers who is in no hurry to declare her allegiance. "I'm maybe a little utopian," she said, "but I would like to wait for the process to play out and hope there will be a clear leader."
Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury said that if there is no clear leader, he is prepared to exercise his judgment. "If the pledged-delegate total is within 100 votes or whatever, I don't think there's a great deal of significance in that," said Bradbury, who also represents other secretaries of state as a superdelegate.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (N.M.) said the decision to create the superdelegate category assumed they would use their own judgment. "If superdelegates were just intended to automatically vote for the preference someone else expressed, there wouldn't be any purpose," he said.
Don Bivens, the party chair in Arizona, said he feels a responsibility to help keep peace in the Democratic family and will wait before choosing sides, and then only after touching various bases within the party. But he added, "I do not feel bound by the popular vote; otherwise there would be no reason to have superdelegates, just to rubber-stamp" the outcomes of primaries and caucuses.
"The dynamics of a general election are very different from either a primary or a caucus," [Senator, CO] Salazar said. "The question will become, for my state -- and this will be my calculation -- how can I best deliver the nine electoral votes from Colorado to the nominee?"
Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (Pa.) said that, as a moderate, he sees his role as helping to bring the party together. "The winner of this nomination will be the president," he said. "When you have that much at stake and you have two historic figures, it's going to be difficult to unify the party, and I think we're going to need people in the middle who can bring people together."
[Senator, WI] Kohl added another criterion, which he called "perhaps the most important" one: Who would make the best president? "It's a judgment based on my knowledge of the two candidates," he said. "It's an intuitive thing, a feel thing, based on all the things that make Obama who he is and Hillary who she is. It's mysterious."
"I think that I made it clear I was supporting the way Dayton and Montgomery County went," McLin said Friday. Should neither candidate reach the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the convention, she said, she hopes that her fellow superdelegates will look closely at who has received the most votes at that point. "I think that popular vote should weigh very heavily in this decision," she said.
While there's no debate about the existence of the superdelegates, positions on their power and purpose is varied even among themselves. Should superdelegates have the right to overturn the pledged delegate count? How exactly does this play in November? Are superdelegates required to vote by their county results? State? Popular vote? Primary percentage? Caucus?
From my personal opinion, I remember in high school, as I was supporting Vice President Gore, I first heard about superdelegates. Even the name offended me. Super is the prefix of superior. Are these Democrats superior in knowledge or heart, somehow? Do they have a predictive vision which is denied the rest of the electorate?
Have they forgotten that the rest of the electorate got them where THEY are?
What is your opinion on this mess?
For those interested, I found a study from 1994 on political behavior and superdelegates. If you have JSTOR access, you can review the entire article. However, if you don't, you're only allowed to see the front page.
Post-1968 changes in the Democratic party's nomination process resulted, by some accounts, in the selection of delegates who knew little about politics, cared little about winning, and were removed from the party following. One remedy for this situation was the reintroduction of party professionals into the process in the form of "superdelegates." Did this cure work? By examining the accuracy of superdelegates' perceptions of the party following's positions on issues compared with those of ordinary delegates, this paper addresses part of this question.
Using data about the views of delegates to the 1988 national party conventions and the 1968 American National Election study, I show that the fears about postreform delegates being more out of touch with the party following than "professionals" (i.e., superdelegates) are largely overstated.
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