The super delegates are playing a wait-and-see game for Hillary, based on her solid Ohio win and what may turn out
to have been an ephemeral win in Texas. The aura of "inevitability"
may seem a little outdated at this point -- until one plumbs the
thinking of super delegates who will play the most important role in
her nomination. Dan Balz, writing at the Washington Post, talks with some of the "deciders."
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.
They will, they say, respect the will of the people up to a certain point. But if the will of the people seems muddled, they'll use their own judgment. Here's Oregon's Secretary of State:
If the pledged-delegate total is within 100 votes or whatever, I don't think there's a great deal of significance in that... I just believe that the determining factor for superdelegates shouldn't be, "Well, 49 percent voted for Hillary and 51 percent voted for Obama, and that decides it for us." Sorry, but that's not how it works.
100 votes "or whatever"! Yesterday, Obama racked up another "decisive" win in Wyoming and will probably take Mississippi in the same way, leaving Pennsylvania as the next "decider." He's 110 pledged delegates ahead.
Party rules allocating delegates on a proportional basis make it virtually certain that Obama will finish the primary season with more pledged delegates than Clinton.
Right!
But neither he nor his rival can clinch the nomination without the superdelegates.
Early on, as a party insider, Clinton had already lined up a substantial number of super delegates. Obama the newcomer has pressured a few, gained a few. Notably heavy pressure continues on Hillary's behalf from Bill Clinton and other Dem pols and Clinton friends like Tony Podesta making the Clinton campaign look even more like Ma Barker and her gang.
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.
The superdelegates are a cross-section of the party, young and old, women and men, of all races and creeds, famous and obscure. They approach the role with more caution than gusto -- and they are now among the most closely monitored Americans on the planet, the focus of elaborate courting and tracking inside the Clinton and Obama campaigns.
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.
Clinton jumped into an early lead in the superdelegate battle, leveraging her connections and a belief among party regulars early in the process that she was the all-but-inevitable nominee.
When Obama went on his February winning streak, the tide shifted and he began to catch up. He gained new endorsements and converted a few Clinton supporters, most prominently Rep. John Lewis (Ga.). Now, after Clinton's victories in Texas and Ohio, the two candidates are fiercely competing for the backing of these delegates. But the superdelegates are resisting.
What criteria are these Democratic insider-deciders using? Well, super delegates tend to believe that they were "hired" to make up their own minds, not just follow the popular will. They're just the Blackwater guards of the Democratic party doing what needs to be done.
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..."
And:
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. ..."
By golly, neither the demands of democracy nor the voters' desires, expressed in huge win margins for Obama, are going to push those guys around! Friendships and past associations can't just be set aside. It's "feel thing"!
Sen. Herb Kohl (Wis.) said that he has a much deeper relationship with Clinton but that he counts Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, as a "dear" friend. Obama won Wisconsin in a landslide.
"The dynamics of a general election are very different from either a primary or a caucus," 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?"
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."
Too mysterious for a lot of us voters in state primaries and caucuses who waited in long lines to commit to the candidate of our choice. The notion of Clinton's "inevitability" may not be erased in the minds of the national Democratic party by numerous high margin wins by Obama in western states, the south, and a raft of "little" states like Vermont. They may or may not be challenged by evidence of Republican spoiler votes, a furious and widespred majority of primary voters, analyses showing a surefire defeat of Clinton by McCain -- or by the prospect of a split party. Wait and see ... wait and see ...
