Reply #11: See...

[gcomeau]

...I don't think this is an entirely accurate depiction of the situation:

"I wonder, though, whether those that would so easily walk away are really the voting bloc that the democratic party wants. Those are the "my way or the highway" group and bowing to them because they might leave feels a little like giving into bullies"

We're not talking about them packing up and going home just because their guy doesn't win. Will there be some of that involved... sure, and that would be regrettable but not something I'd be nearly as worried about as what we're facing here.

We're talking about having these young new voters come out for the campaigning, work their tails off, have millions of voters participate in the process and go in favor of their candidate by a significant margin, have him showing every indication that he can win the presidency as the nominee, walk into the convention with every right to expect to be nominated... then have him not win because a couple hundred party leaders get together in a back room and decide against it. That is a far harder thing to ask a group of young and idealistic people to swallow than just having their guy 'not win'. And telling them it's within the rules won't matter one little bit to how they view it, nor could I honestly argue it should. If Clinton just won the nomination flat out with pledged delegates I think most of the new young Obama supporters could have swallowed it. If she went to the convention winning in delegates and the supers just rubber-stamped it I think the same applies. If she went in effectively even and the supers swung it her way I think that would have been more problematic but probably survivable. But if she goes in down a hundred or more pledged delegates and wins purely because the supers go against that trend that's a whole other ballgame, and a hundred pledged delegate differential is what we're looking at here easily, even if we're quite generous to Clinton in projections of the remaining primaries.

And yes, you have a point that this is probably a stronger case for having Clinton bow out than for having your average individual voter line up behind Obama, but that doesn't mean it doesn't also apply to a degree on the individual voter level when the pledged delegate equation is pretty much finalized barring something absurdly momentous completely altering the final closing stages of the campaign. (And the indications are becoming pretty clear now that Wright didn't do that, not after the speech. If Wright didn't do it, what do we really think could?)