Comments on Superdelegate Watch

Notice how brave they all are, resolutely avoiding deciding till the returns are all in.

Profiles in Courage.

Like Pelosi's standing up for just cutting the funding of the war.

(Tangent) I don't understand the whole "superdelegates should follow the will of the people" meme. If that's true, then why do we have them in the first place? It seems like the entire reason the Dems created them was to thwart the will of the people. In case, ya know, they get it wrong. Ahem.

If the electeds thwart the will of the people, they'll have well-funded challengers who will replace them.

That's called consequences.

i always thought the super-delegates were supposed to be used to prevent a catastrophic candidate from getting the nomination. something where if they all band together they could use their mass to stop a mistake.

in this case, we don't have a "bad" candidate. but they can vote how they like nonetheless.

None of the memes make any sense whatsoever, but the campaigns have to invent some kind of argument to sway people. In my opinion, the big state argument is pretty transparently unconvincing. If Clinton believes she can win working-class Catholics and Hispanics and therefore Ohio and Texas, that's her argument, not this silly big-state thing. The "follow the will of the people" makes sense only because both candidates are competent--in another hypothetical race where, say, Kucinich was battling Clinton, the supers could legitimately overturn the will of the people, since Kucinich would never ever beat McCain in the general. In my opinion.

And Will, nobody is going to mount a robust primary challenge against Murray or Cantwell purely on the grounds that they preferred Clinton. You're being unrealistic.

I understand the reasoning to be:

We're staying neutral because if Hillary actually swings this election somehow, and we vote the wrong way, she will eat our hearts for breakfast.

Well, or in Sharon's case, she's probably being neutral. I'll ask her tomorrow.

The superdelegates are going to break for the winner once it becomes apparent who that is. I don't think ideology or personal preference is going to play much part in the remaining delegates. All of the superdelegates with strong feelings either way have already declared (and even some of those are switching).

Obama's lead will thus survive the superdelegates; at the point where Obama's pledged delegates plus his already-declared superdelegates plus about half of the remaining SDs puts him over the top, ALL of the remaining SDs will declare for him -- or for Clinton if the math breaks for her following what would have to be an incredible series of massive 70-30 victories.

That point gets closer and closer. Not only is Obama holding and increasing his lead, but the pool of available delegates to divvy up gets smaller and smaller. Also, the loser gets delegates too; this is why FL and MI no longer matter. Yes, there are 313 delegates there, but the net gain for Clinton even if they are seated as-is is only about 50.

EVEN IF YOU COUNT THEM, Obama only needs about 80-100 more pledged delegates (out of 608 left in the remaining states) IF the remaining SDs split 50-50.

Fluteproof @2, yes, it's possible for primary voters to "get it wrong" -- the situation that could occur if an otherwise successful candidate self-destructs after the primaries and before the convention. Superdelegates can lead the Party to coalesce behind an alternate choice. Infrequent @4 understands that.

My guess is that Obama will continue to lead in pledged delegates and primary vote totals, by some narrow margin, and the superdelegates will coalesce behind him when they are ready to end it. Clinton's fundamentals, lead by her continuing high negative ratings, are just too risky, and overriding the results of the primaries, for no good reason other than "it's just politics", would irreparably divide the party.

If the Clinton camp continues its march to destroy Obama, effectively writing the GOP playbook for November, the superdelegates' action will occur sooner rather than later.

The LAST thing on the mind of the supers is party self-destruction.

The only path to victory for Clinton is via coup by super delegate.

Clinton knows this.

That's why there's all the talk about poaching pledged delegates and spinning uncertainty around Michigan and Florida, and laying the case for super delegates to discard the popular will and stage a coup.

Yet a coup by super delegate would plunge the party in civil war.

Clinton knows this, it's her only path to victory, and she doesn't care. She is willing -- nay, eager to split the party apart in her mad pursuit of power.

If the situations were reversed, and Obama was lagging in the delegates, popular vote, states won, money raised, and every other reasonable measure, then I'd feel the same way about Obama. (I pulled the plug early on Dean in 2004.) But that's not the case.

It is Clinton, with no reasonable chance of victory, who is fomenting civil war in order to overturn the will of the Democratic electorate. As such, as far as I'm concerned, she doesn't deserve "fairness" on this site. All sexist attacks will be dealt with -- those will never be acceptable. But otherwise, Clinton has set an inevitably divisive course and must be dealt with appropriately.

To reiterate, she cannot win without overturning the will of the national Democratic electorate and fomenting civil war, and she doesn't care.

That's why she has earned my scorn and that of so many others. That's why she is bleeding super delegates. That's why she's even bleeding her own caucus delegates (remember, she lost a delegate in Iowa on Saturday). That's why Keith Olbermann finally broke his neutrality. That's why Nancy Pelosi essentially cast her lot with Obama. That's why Democrats outside of the Beltway are hoping for the unifying Obama at the top of the ticket, and not a Clinton so divisive, she is actually working to split her own party.

Meanwhile, Clinton and her shrinking band of paranoid holdouts wail and scream about all those evil people who have "turned" on Clinton and are no longer "honest power brokers" or "respectable voices" or whatnot, wearing blinders to reality, talking about silly little "strikes" when in reality, Clinton is planning a far more drastic, destructive and dehabilitating civil war.

People like me have two choices -- look the other way while Clinton attempts to ignite her civil war, or fight back now, before we cross that dangerous line. Honestly, it wasn't a difficult choice. And it's clear, looking at where the super delegates, most bloggers, and people like Olbermann are lining up, that the mainstream of the progressive movement is making the same choice.

And the more super delegates see what is happening, and what Clinton has in store, the more imperative it is that they line up behind Obama and put an end to it before it's too late.

'Nuff said.

hey, didn't i read that somewhere else this morning?