Superdelegates: What Do You Think?

Unsurprisingly, I've got some hot opinions on superdelegates.

Part of the initial reasons superdelegates were created was to take the nominating process out of the "smoky back room" of the Democratic machine. At the same time, some of the other reasons included injecting more of an "electable" argument into the nominating process to limit the impact of party activists.

One thing is beyond dispute: The environment in which superdelegates were created in the early 1980s and the environment in which we are discussing their impact in 2008 are very, very different.

I sincerely hope that one campaign or the other will put things clearly out of reach in terms of won delegates and that this will not come down to superdelegates. I think if our nominee is decided by superdelegates (or, as the Clinton campaign, in a Lutzian feat of rhetorical engineering, refers to them, "automatic delegates") and the nominee is not the one ahead in the delegate count from the primaries and caucuses (not Michigan and Florida, either, unless they have some kind of do-over), I think we're going to shed a lot of interest from independents and first time voters that we've seen so far in this cycle.

In genergal, the superdelegates have a legitimate role in breaking ties and in adjusting for late-campaign information that the voters may not have had. For instance, if the vote in a state went for one candidate before the other candidate emerged from the pack, and the voters in that state currently favor another candidate, the it's legitimate for the superdelegates in that state to go for the second candidate. And if a dead body is found in the trunk of a candidate's car, then all the superdelegates should do their best to keep him or her from the nomination, regardless of how the primary votes went.

But none of those hypotheticals apply this year. Obama and Clinton have been prominent from the start, and there haven't been any blockbuster revelations about either of them. Barring any late surprises, the superdelegates have no good reason for bucking the will of the voters.

The superdelegates also have a role in keeping the winning candidate from rewriting all the party rules for their own benefit. When it comes to credentials, platform and rules, their loyalty should be to the party, and to the future of the party, not to this year's candidates. It will be interesting to see how that turns out if there is a credentials fight over Florida and Michigan. Almost all of Clinton's lead among superdelegates comes from DNC members, the very people who decided to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates. Will they suddenly have a change of heart because their candidate said so?

What superdelegates shouldn't do is rig the system in advance. As political activists they may support one candidate or another, but as superdelegates they shouldn't commit to anybody until the last votes are recorded. Sadly, that hasn't happened. Almost half the superdelegates have committed, and many of them did so before Iowa!

As for reforming the system, we've got a real problem. The superdelegates have no interest in legislating themselves out of existence, and the winning campaign will have just profited from the superdelegate system and probably won't be interested in changing things.

FYI

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Superdelegate_Transparency_Pr...