Superdelegates Explained

Now that the term "superdelegates" has become a big part of the 2008 Dem election story, it would be helpful to the political novices to understand just what a superdelegate is, how they came to be, and what the goal was with their creation. Tad Devine explains it pretty well in an op-ed in The New York Times:

Democrats created these superdelegates after the 1980 election with several purposes in mind.

Party leaders had been underrepresented on the floor of the 1980 convention, which was the culmination of a bitter contest for the nomination between President Jimmy Carter and Senator Ted Kennedy that left our party deeply divided and contributed to the party’s loss of the presidency that year.

Many party leaders felt that the delegates would actually be more representative of all Democratic voters if we had more elected officials on the convention floor to offset the more liberal impulses of party activists.

But the superdelegates were also created to provide unity at the nominating convention.

They are a critical mass of uncommitted convention voters who can move in large numbers toward the candidate who receives the most votes in the party’s primaries and caucuses. Their votes can provide a margin of comfort and even victory to a nominee who wins a narrow race.

The superdelegates were never intended to be part of the dash from Iowa to Super Tuesday and beyond. They should resist the impulse and pressure to decide the nomination before the voters have had their say.

The line about "the more liberal impulses of the party activists" certainly applies to the MoveOn/DailyKos/Code Pinko crowd of today, just as it applied to the antiwar crowd that won the nomination for George McGovern in 1972. McGovern proved that far left liberalism would get you creamed in the general election, even against a somewhat unlikeable GOP candidate. Can you imagine what would happen to the Dem party if the Code Pinko activists controlled the nomination? You might have another 50 state sweep for the GOP - even with John McCain as the nominee.

Will the superdelegates take Devine's advice and stay out? Not likely, since a great many of them are Clinton cronies. It will take dramatic wins by Obama to convince them that they dare not spit in the face of the party voters, and even then, some will cling to Clinton out of loyalty, or perhaps fear.

I'll talk about this subject and more on Monday's BlogTalkRadio program which you can hear by clicking on the icon. Feel free to call in and join the conversation. The show kicks off at 8pm PT Monday night.

I've expanded Monday's show to 45 minutes to give us plenty of time. The call-in number will be (347) 347-5547.