ebrown_p wrote:Finn... I think everyone in the Democratic party understands this.
There will be lots of pressure on the super delegates to side with candidate that the voters supported. If Obama has a majority of pledged delegates, I am almost certain the super delegates will follow suit.
Understanding it is one thing, resolving it is another.
Which of these two candidates is going to bow out rather than split the party?
The time is now for both of their ambitions.
Hillary doesn't want to wait four or twelve years, and she might be hard pressed to preserve her leadership status through such a long period of time. In addition, as superficial as it is, 12 years are much less kind to a woman than a man.
Obama can taste it. 2008 may be the perfect storm for him, and in some part of his mind he has to wonder if it can be repeated in four or twelve years. His sort of appeal of freshness, hope and vision is tough to maintain over 4 to 12 years of hard slogging politics, and that assumes he wins reelection.
Assuming the rest of the primaries play out to the scenario of no clear winner by the convention, Obama has to be leading in delegates, and that lead has to be large enough to overcome whatever delegates flow to Clinton when Florida and Michigan are reincorporated (and they will be) into the process. It probably also has to be large enough to overcome a majority of the super-delegates voting for Hillary.
If he has one delegate less than Hillary it's over for him and that is how it should be since this is the calculus he promotes.
On the other hand, Hillary has the super-delegate wild card. I saw one of these folks on TV last night and he was adamant that he will be voting for Clinton no matter how his state primary goes, and no matter who is in the lead going into the Convention.
I can understand why Obama supporters would be upset about an outcome that involved Hillary winning thanks to the super-delegates, and there could be court challenges, but the fact is that the Party created the super-delegates and gave them the freedom to vote however they wished. I doubt that the law is applied to party elections as it is applied to civil elections, and I suspect that the party by-laws will determine the outcome.
The super-delegate dilemma is yet another source of irony in this race. The proportional rule was adopted by the Democrats to address the possibility that a minority candidate might do very well nationally, but not well enough in more than one or two states. It at least created the appearance that the playing field had been levelled, but the Party leaders didn't want to take the chance that this rule could result in the nomination of someone like Jesse Jackson who would have no chance in the general election, and so they created the super-delegate failsafe.
How ironic would it be if these super-delegates deprive a black candidate, who has a real shot of winning the presidency, of the nomination and his chance to make history?
Ultimately, if it comes down to the super-delegates it is going to come down to seasoned political professionals who have forged alliances and incurred political debt over many years. Many of these super-delegates still have ongoing political careers. I would not hold my breath waiting for these folks to make their decision based on what is "fair," and they will be under pressure from both sides. Instead they will calculate how their vote effects their own career or honors alliances and pays off debts. If they see their careers being better of with Clinton than Obama, they will vote for Clinton.
This of course leads to another possible irony. Will "Above Politics" Obama find himself forced to cut deals with these super-delegates?
