It's A Party For The Party
by Mark Adams
Super Delegates, Schmooper Delegates. The convention is a long way off.
Please spare me from any more drivel about the public acquiescing to the whims of a party elite being somehow equivalent to Soviet sheeple bowing under pressure from some Politburo:
[...] once the people at large have internalized the notion that it is okay for an elite group of philosopher kings to make decisions for them, then the people have internalized and institutionalized their own oppression.Yes, just what I need more of, some wise sage explaining why super delegates are so seemingly powerful -- and how it will be the end of us all. Spare me, mm'kay?
Governors, Senators, Congresscritters and members of the DNC (and yes, former Democratic Presidents) get to vote at the party's convention because they ARE the face, the leadership of the Party. They represent the heart and soul of the Party.
They earned it. They get their ticket punched because they did more than you or I did to get a Democrat in office. They did more fundraising, made more phone calls, showed up for more votes, did more organizing and campaigning and spent more time on it than anyone -- because they did it for themselves. It's a perk of office, something to be expected.
How they vote, just like how you vote, is their choice.
If you want that kind of influence, put down the laptop, get your ass down to the board of elections, and run for something. It's a free country -- pretty much anyway.
They get their ticket punched because they did more than you or I did to get a Democrat in office.
I know how you feel about this. I'm hack-pragmatist and I felt the same way too. But after thinking some more, here's what I found: the logical extension of the argument is that their work is somehow worth more than my vote.
In other words, we can all go vote (which, as a small-d democrat I believe is about as holy an act as you can perform) and then the apparatchiks can pull the lever and nominate the other guy -- because "they did more than I did to get a Democrat in office?"
Doesn't compute.
Look -- no argument from me: the rules say there are no rules. But if the superdelegates nominate someone that is perceived to be the loser in the primaries (whoever that might be), then that's probably the end of the primaries, the end of that candidate's camapaign and perhaps the end of the party.
Luckily I don't believe there are a large enough bloc of superdelegates who are so stupid as to follow through on this idea.
But there is apparently one candidate who wants them to.
BTW, selection as the official nominee grants no specific public authority, no real power per se.
Shocking that Hillary is lobbying the Super Delegates! What's really going on is that she's more effective at it than Obama so far. That goes with the territory of running a top-down campaign.
What is the tally now? Since Tsunami Tuesday Hillary is minus 3 and Obama is plus 14, right?
I agree that you aren't going to have a huge block going against their own constituencies, with or without Bowers and his Transparency Project. The Bandwagon effect is also powerful.
Bottom line though, if Obama can't win in TexOhPenn, you have to question just how powerful the "movement" is. You're the one who was posting the amazing support he was getting early in Austin, TX, right? Hillary wasn't bringing in crowds of 20-K last summer. Now it's time to close the deal.
if Obama can't win in TexOhPenn, you have to question just how powerful the "movement" is.
Oh please. Is this another argument that red state Democratic delegates don't count because the Democrats won't win there in November? What's Clinton's explanation for the Puerto Rico primary then?
Besides, if Democrats come out to vote for Obama in Idaho and end up electing a Democratic Senator to replace Larry Craig, how is that bad?
Hillary's campaign seems constantly off balance. First they were surprised that they lost Iowa. Then they were surprised that they won New Hampshire. Now we hear that they're shocked to discover that Texas has a loopy way of allocating delegates. What's next? They open their 6th grade social studies book and discover something called "the Electoral College?"
And just where is TexOhPenn anyway?
Can we get over "the movement" narrative now? Obama is a politician who hasn't been smeared by the right-wing or the mainstream press yet so he has appeal across the great apolitical middle of the country. He's also a more articulate, inspiration speaker than Hillary and has shown better judgement so far. If that's not good enough then I don't know what is.
Oh he's been smeared all right -- and probably not for the last time. I don't need to go down the laundry list, do I?
OK, I should have said successfully smeared. You know, like "Al Gore the liar" smeared or "John Kerry the flip-flopper" smeared, where the narrative gets promulgated by the mainstream media and takes hold among the great unwashed, uninformed masses.
It's still early.