Superdelegates: Do your duty. Now.

[MindMatter]

Superdelegates, a lot of people have been wondering why you even exist. We are told that you are the wise leaders who are expected to mainly be transparent in the background, but you are our firewall to prevent the party's self-destruction in the event that the primary season ends inconclusively.

Well, guess what? The Party is self-destructing. Let's review some facts.

1) Obama will end up the primary season ahead of Clinton in delegates.

2) Unless there is a complete collapse in the few remaining contests, he will also end up ahead in popular vote.

3) When you consider the reach of the caucuses, he ends up ahead by well over a million Democrats who took part in the process.

4) He has done all of this, taking the high road consistently, maintaining a collegiality that can bring back millions of average folks who have been voting with the GOP for a couple of decades.

5) He has also amassed a huge base of financial support, a million donors who have the ability to supply at lease another $300,000,000 to the Obama campaign and the DNC to score big victories up and down tickets in 50 states.

So there is no question he will either be our nominee or else you will be presiding over complete chaos come August and complete disaster come November.

6) Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign is without money -- not paying their bills, and a negligible donor base.

7) The Clinton campaign has taken the low road, teaming with Richard Mellon Scaife of all people, Faux News, and Rush Limbaugh to flame the Wright fires.

Superdelegates, we cannot permit a Democrat to SwiftBoat our nominee. I know it is easy to say, "There's nothing wrong with a couple of candidates mixing it up a little. That's just politics." Well, maybe some years, but not this time. The stakes are just too high.

We, the party faithful, have done our part. Now you must do yours. Please, you have a duty to do. The only purpose for your standing as superdelegate is to prevent exactly the situation we now face where the party is ripped into two. Every day that goes by makes the damage worse, and less likely to be repaired in time to beat the Republicans.

I do not want to see Obama forced to use his $50,000,000 war chest to Swift Boat Hillary Clinton. I don't want to have to read about Monica Lewinski, Vince Foster, Whitewater, NAFTA-gate, Bosnia-gate or any other nonsense that could be used to tarnish Clinton. How would that help any of us?

Do your duty. Now.

[MiniMe]

1. I disagree, but only the timing

I think they should wait until everybody has voted, then cast their votes. Everybody's votes should count torwards this before a decision is made by the supers.

[Texas Hill Country]

5. agreed.

[rinsd]

2. Caucus's are figured into popular vote tallies except for IA, NV, WA & ME

Estimates have put Obama's pop vote lead as about 110K better with those caucuses.

RCP has all the conceivible counts for pop vote here

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html

[lumberjack_jeff]

12. I don't get that.

It isn't necessary to estimate Washington's vote. We conducted a primary AND a caucus.

The primary results were radically different from the caucus results.

http://vote.wa.gov/elections/wei/results.aspx?ElectionID=3

[Spider Jerusalem]

22. And the primary results are utterly meaningless since it allocated zero delegates.

[lumberjack_jeff]

24. I think we need a new name.

Officialcrats? Representocrats? How about "Timocrats"?

The point of this thread is to see how well our process of candidate selection meshes with the will of the voters. The answer is not so well.

[Spider Jerusalem]

25. That's not the point of this thread at all, actually.

And it's the process we have. If we elected our presidents on the basis of popular vote Al Gore would be coming to the end of his second term in office. As it is, as long as our nominating process and presidential elections are decided on a state-by-state basis, we have the possibility of a nominee who won more delegates from the nominating process and received fewer overall votes, or of a president who won the required number of electoral votes and lost the popular vote. You can't talk about the 'will of the voters' as a monolithic thing when our current system allows for such outcomes. Neither the Democratic nomination nor the presidency is decided on the basis of popular vote. Therefore even bringing it up is pointless.

[lumberjack_jeff]

29. Actually, you're right.

The will of the voters (which is determinate and quantifiable) isn't the point of the OP. The point of the OP is to urge the Timocrats to act before the rabble can confuse the issue by voting.

[Spider Jerusalem]

34. Once again:

The metric used to decide the nomination is number of delegates. These last few primaries will not change the outcome a jot.

[lumberjack_jeff]

35. It would have saved a lot of drama to invite the superdelegates

To the meeting room at the DC Hilton so that they could pick for us.

Skip the facade. Just pick the one who raised the most money.

[Spider Jerusalem]

36. HA!

You're fucking joking, right? Hillary would have an argument if she'd actually won the most delegates (whcih she hasn't), and the most votes from legitimate contests (which she also hasn't; Florida and Michigan don't count, and neither does the beauty contest in WA).

[lumberjack_jeff]

38. The validity of my suggestion

is directly proportional to your list of voters who "don't count".

[Spider Jerusalem]

39. what part of legitimate primary do you not understand?

There were no legitimate primaries in Michigan or Florida, and the one in Washington state awarded no delegates.

[lumberjack_jeff]

40. You confuse "understand" with "agree"

The post to which I responded was a link to a website reporting a running tally of popular votes for each candidate. To create a 50-state tally, they chose to extrapolate and use a hypothetical popular vote based on the results of the Washington caucus a state in which a primary was also conducted. The popular vote differed from the caucus result by more than 10%, thus the extrapolated popular vote was entirely, verifiably and unnecessarily fictional.

There is no reason to guess - the vote count is posted prominently on the Washington SoS website.

The process was created such that 10% or more of voters don't matter. I find that fundamentally undemocratic.

The process could as easily have been set up such that voters would not "count" if the calendar date of their birth does not have a "3" in it, and it would be no less arbitrary or undemocratic.

[Spider Jerusalem]

41. The Washington primary awards no delegates. The caucus does award delegates.

The race is about delegates, not popular vote.

[lumberjack_jeff]

44. Which brings us back to post #35. Lather, rinse, repeat. n/t

[Spider Jerusalem]

45. And post 35 is a bit of exceptional stupidity.

That ignores the fact that Obama has an insurmountable lead in delegates, and that if any deciding by the superdelegates contrary to the primary outcome were done it would be in favour of Clinton.

[TheDoorbellRang]

3. That's it in a nutshell

Did you send that off to any of them?

[Triana]

4. Agreed. They need to sh*t or get off the fence. n/t

[olkaz]

6. When Obama hits 2025, Hillary WILL NOT DROP OUT

This is the thing to keep in mind.

It doesn't matter if the supers decide this thing early. She's not going anywhere. She will work to flip votes, undermine Obama's legitimacy, and work toward some sort of Eliot Spitzer moment to hand her the nomination.

She will not relent. Period.

[stevietheman]

13. Well, if that happens, I'm sure she will be forced out. n/t

n/t

[olkaz]

17. By whom?

Seriously, there's only two people who can stop the kamikaze candidate, and they are driven by single-minded ambition.

I hope I'm wrong.

[MindMatter]

27. She won't, but the press will run a different narrative

At that point, he will get the "presumptive nominee John McCain" treatment. And when she persists at making noise, most of the press will cover her the same way they cover Brittney Spears or Lindsay Lohan when then have their meltdowns.

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. Hurry! Before it's too late!

Teh peoplez are gonna vote for the wrong one!

[SIMPLYB1980]

8. OH NOES!!!!

[DJ13]

9. Reid was on Ed Schultz last hour, and I have to say that guy has no balls

He's about as spineless as a jellyfish, no real commitment to try and get his colleagues to decide.

I swear he sounds scared of the Clintons.

Makes me wonder what kind of threats are going around in DC to keep these people from making a public announcement.

[MattNC]

21. that's the problem

with many of the remaining undecided superdelegates. very few of them want to bother to grow a pair.

[2rth2pwr]

10. Thank God for SD"s!! They can make the right decision with all the info.

Unfortunately, the early states voted without all the facts. Now that we know Obama will be a disaster, the SD's should step in and signal that fundraing efforts starting from now

need to go to Hillary. If they make the right decision the remaining states can come together behind Hillary and we can go into the convention with momentum.

Somebody deserves serious high fives for creating the Super Delegate's to keep our party from choosing a nominee who would have taken the party over the cliff.

[shaniqua6392]

11. They are waiting until everyone has a chance to vote.

Then they will vote for whom they find to be the most electable. That is what they are supposed to do. That is why they were created. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the remaining SD's. Let's just let this play out. No one needs to drop out of the race. It has been a good thing for the Democratic Party. We are registering many new members and donations are great.

[DJ13]

14. That is what they are supposed to do.

Oh really?

But I imagine you were just fine with Clinton getting over 160 SD endorsements before a single vote was cast, werent you?

[shaniqua6392]

23. I don't support Clinton so get off your high horse

and learn what the SD's are for. It is a crappy system, but it is all we have. Frankly, I wish they would change the system. But then I am not too fond of the electoral college either. Why do Obama supporters automatically assume that someone is a "Clinton supporter" if they happen to say anything remotely critical of their candidate?? I criticize both of them. I think they are both weak candidates and I am unhappy with both of them really. I like some things and I don't like some things about both of them. Is is so shocking that there are many of us out here who really don't like either of them?? Is there nothing that you don't like about Obama? Is he so perfect that you defend everything about him? Last time I looked he was just a man....just a politician...not perfect. The fact that his supporters never find any fault with anything about him is frightening!!

[MindMatter]

31. About 1% of the public had even heard of the word "superdelegate" at that point.

I wasn't fine with it. I didn't have an opinion at all about it. But once I found out that the elections alone would not decide it, then no, I am not alt all find with party bosses lining up behind a candidate before the first state has cast a vote.

Now we are at the end of the process. There are a few states left to vote, but there is no realistic scenario where Clinton will come out with more pledged delegates, so there is no longer any good reason for the Superdelegates to stand on the sideline.

And if it is too much for them to say "I am supporting Obama", they can simply say, "I will cast my vote for the candidate who ends up with the most pledged delegates won under the rules everybody agreed to." That would take care of it right there.

[RiverStone]

15. Lets hope the SuperD's will not let the media whores decide the race

At least today, they seem to be reminding voters with 5-6 Obama endorsements that they ARE NOT buying into the bullshit.

Great post!

K&R

[RiverStone]

16. dupe

:)

[TragedyandHope]

18. America is calling you to action. Will you answer?

:kick:

[paulk]

19. their duty is to choose the nominee with the best chance of

winning the general election.

Period.

You Obama faithful keep pushing the idea that this race is a landslide for Obama. It's not. It's very close. Millions of Democrats have voted for and support
Hillary Clinton. They are the "party faithful" also. In fact, exit polling has shown that more of the "party faithful" - real, registered Democrats and long time party activists, have voted for her than for her opponent.

BTW - these constant calls for the race to end do not make Obama look strong. They make him look weak. They make him look like a candidate that wants to back into the nomination. You really aren't doing him any favors with this sort of thing.

[suston96]

20. Super delegates, do your duty...vote for whichever candidate won your state. nt

[MindMatter]

26. That misses the point about why we have superdelegates

If their job was to represent the state, then we wouldn't need them at all. That is what PLEDGED delegates do.

The only reason that anybody has offered for having superdelegates is to resolve EXACTLY the kind of situation that Clinton's Swift Boat campaign has now created. That is why we have Superdelegates, and it is time they stepped in and did their job.

[suston96]

28. "That is why we have super delegates"? Is that a theory or actually in the Party Charter? nt

[lumberjack_jeff]

32. Superdelegates were created to avoid the McGovern outcome.

An outcome in which the process gave birth to a nominee with no chance of winning the GE.

I see a strong risk of a worst case scenario. An undemocratic process which produces an unelectable nominee.

Awarding the nomination to the one who has the most support of democratic voters has merit. Awarding the nomination to the one who has the best chance of winning the GE has merit.

It's looking like we're doing neither.

[MindMatter]

37. Hillary had a tiny change of winning. Now she has none.

Her negatives have increased across the board. She was never going to get much support from Republicans and swing voters. Her only chance of winning a General election was by holding 90% of the Democratic base, and that is absolutely not happening now. She would be lucky to save 75% of the Democrats. Moreover, her big problem is that millions would simply walk away from the process.

We need to get that possibility out of our psyche. It would be a total unmitigated disaster, not just for 2008, but for the next generation of voters we have a chance to bring into the process today.

I'm not saying Obama wins in a cakewalk. I think it will be a very difficult campaign in the best of circumstances. And Clinton is giving us the worst possible circumstances for us to begin this campaign.

Just for the record -- check my posts -- I have not been a Clinton supporter ever, but I did not object strongly to her staying in the race until she started teaming up with Scaife in the SwiftBoating of Obama. That crosses the line for me.

[knixphan]

43. well-said

[caledesi]

30. I agree! NT

[depakid]

33. Be careful what you wish for

The superdelagate's ONLY DUTY -their raison d'etre, is to ensure that the Democrats don't end up with a loser in the fall.

It's NOT their duty to endorse (or cast their ballot for) some people's favorite candidate, and walk blindly down the primrose path.

The same is true about ultimately casting a ballot for Hillary. They can easily deadlock the convention, and find a compromise- who WOULD have a reasonable chance in November.

[BzaDem]

42. "Oh shit, my candidate is losing support, we better lock up the nomination before its too late"

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

46. k&r