So we all know that the Democratic primary isn’t purely a democracy: the Democratic Party allows one delegate apiece to major Democratic party members like state governors and party officials. These “superdelegates”, while not strictly democratic in the “voice of the people” sense, actually consist of almost 20% of the delegates who will cast their vote at the DNC to elect the Democratic candidate. So who gets them?
I’m torn on this issue- the Clintons have a lot of sway within the Democratic party and I expect that pull to draw a lot of the votes their way. On the other hand, a lot of Democrats don’t think Hillary would make a bad president but concede she may be unelectable, especially against John McCain, who’s currently the Republican frontrunner, and so might support Obama.
Honestly, I think everything is going to be settled within the next four weeks. With a two person race, either Obama is going to get the benefit of Edwards dropping out of the race and will surge to a series of victories, or Clinton is just going to grind out one win after another.
In either case, I think the frontrunner will have things more or less sewn up by March 1. In that case, the superdelegates will simply fall in line with the winner in order to give the nominee some momentum coming out of the convention. With a weak Republican candidate (either McCain or Romney, both are very beatable), there’s little sense to superdelegates voting their conscience and supporting someone who will not be nominated.
Still, with so much happening on Super Tuesday, I could envision the race being neck and neck most of the way through. Voters won’t have a chance to see who’s pulling ahead because half of the election happens on the same day that they vote. If no clear winner comes out next week, I suspect it’ll be fairly close going into the DNC.
I’d disagree that McCain is “very beatable”, but that might be a matter for another thread.
This current superdelegate list shows HRC with an early, but narrowing, superdelegate lead. Currently 188 superdelegates endorse her and 93 endorse him according to that tally anyway. 17 have endorsed Edwards so are now back in play and 439 are undeclared. That merely represents those who wanted to back the then obvious winner early … back when she was "inevitable."Of course even those who have endorsed can switch if they see it as being in the party’s best interest for them to do so.
The largest chunk of uncommitted superdelegates are DNC members. I can’t imagine that they are thrilled with HRC’s Florida antics which undermines the DNC’s authority. That said their prime interest is avoiding a brokered convention, or even an ugly contest getting close to annointment time. Well before them they’ll start rallying behind one or the other to push him or her over the top.