Superdelegates To Clinton's Rescue?by Ari Berman
February 2, 2008
The Democratic primary contest is shaping up to be the closest since 1984. The campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are preparing for a delegate battle. If the race goes down to the wire, an elite contingent of superdelegates — unpledged party operatives and elected officials not chosen by primary voters — could play a decisive role, even though most voters don't know they exist. How could the Democratic Party be so, well, undemocratic?
Rewind to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which showcased the undue influence of the party's old guard. Big-city bosses like Chicago Mayor Richard Daley handed the nomination to Hubert Humphrey, despite Humphrey's support for a deeply unpopular war and the fact that he hadn't won a single primary. As Rick Perlstein recounts in his forthcoming book, "Nixonland," Eugene McCarthy won 79 percent of the vote in the Pennsylvania primary but got less than 20 percent of the state's delegates at the convention. The rest were picked by the party machine. The will of the voters was ignored at the convention, and protesters on the streets outside it were met with clubs and tear gas.
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The obvious beneficiary of the superdelegates this time around is another establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton. Before Super Tuesday, Obama had sixty-three pledged delegates, compared with Clinton's forty-eight. But as we went to press Clinton had a huge advantage in superdelegates, 184 to ninety-five, according to CNN. "Many of the superdelegates were in and out of the Clinton White House, invited to dinners, have received contributions from Clinton allies," says Hart, who has endorsed Obama. "There will be pressure brought to bear to cash in those chips."
Clinton has a wealth of contacts to tap, in the party and in her campaign. There's the former president himself, of course, and Clinton's campaign chair, Terry McAuliffe, who ran the DNC from 2001 to 2005, and a top Clinton surrogate, Harold Ickes, who serves on the DNC's influential rules committee. The Clintons are working hard to bring the large bloc of uncommitted superdelegates into the senator's camp. "I know Hillary is calling superdelegates regularly, which is a smart play," says Art Torres, California Democratic Party chair. Interviews with superdelegates in Alabama, California, Colorado and Massachusetts — a random sample of February 5 states — illustrate this close attention. After Ramona Martinez, a Denver city councilwoman, switched her support from Bill Richardson to Clinton, she received immediate thank-you calls from McAuliffe and Clinton adviser Ann Lewis. In Alabama "Hillary would get the majority of the superdelegates," predicts state party chair Joe Turnham. "A lot of it is longstanding relationships. People go back to the 1980s with Bill Clinton, when he first came to Alabama."
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There's disagreement within the party about how many of the 400-plus uncommitted superdelegates have yet to make up their minds. "There's a lot of people claiming to be undecided," says Pomona, California, mayor Norma Torres, a superdelegate who backs Obama. "I think by now they've decided, but they don't want to say." Superdelegates are notoriously fickle, and can swap candidates at any time. ..... No matter what happens with the superdelegates this year, it's unsettling to have a large bloc of party officials who are not answerable to the party's electorate. ..... But just as the activists of '68 pushed aside the party bosses, forty years later voters can demand that the party's nominee reflect their choice.
The question remains: Do we want wild card superdelegates trumping the will of the voters? It's a serious issue we need to address now.
IMHO we need:
1. Caucuses this spring in Florida and Michigan to obtain legitimate delegates.
2. Pledges from superdelegates that they will not overturn the will of their states' voters.
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