On the Superdelegates
I’ve heard more than a few talking heads say that the Democrats’ answer to the House of Lords, better known as the superdelegates, would never vote for the candidate who lost among democratically elected pledged delegates. If that’s true, why have superdelegates at all? That said, I do tend to agree with those who say the super-duper-pooper-scooper delegates would never overturn both the elected delegate count and the popular vote. Suppose we end up with a choice between the two? I’m torn between the following theories:
- The Supreme Soviet of Delegates will vote to uphold the pledged delegates, thereby proving once and for all that their sole function is to give losing candidates false hope.
- The Dear Leaders among Delegates will vote to support whoever wins The Popular VoteTM, for the simple reason that they haven’t gotten over the 2000 election. This theory could get particularly interesting if the question of who won The Popular VoteTM depends on whether or not Florida, let alone Michigan, is included in the tally.
- Moveon.org, having bought and owned (pwn3ed?) the Democratic Party since 2004, will finally take possession of their property and nominate Obama.
- The royal family will interpret the delegate / popular vote split as giving them cover to vote for the candidate of their choice. Upon examining the candidates, they conclude that Obama is an unelectable hack, and will nominate the candidate who has a better chance of defeating McCain.
- The DeBeers of Democracy will interpret the delegate / popular vote as guaranteeing that no matter what they do, half of all registered Democrats will become convinced that their election has been “stolen,” thereby all but guaranteeing that the winner of the election will have only half the party behind him in November, running against a Republican most Democrats don’t mind all that much anyway. So they write off the 2008 election as either (1) unwinnable or (2) equally winnable for both candidates, and look to the long-term interest of the party. “Stealing” the election from Hillary will piss off her supporters in the short run, but they’ll get over it by 2012. “Stealing” the election from the black guy will remove a core constituency from the party for a generation or more. They nominate Obama.
What say you? Any other plausible scenarios I missed?
April 27th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
If they think the choice does not matter to who wins the election (either unwinable or equally winable by either), then they chose Hillary. The reasoning is that they are never going to be able to maintain majority-party status as long as they are being pulled so far to the left by the moveon.org crowd so they want to discourage the moveon.org supporters and try to weaken them.