Superdelegates, And Such

Walt writes in about the Democratic campaign, nearly on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary:

Hey Marc: From your blog: "Obama for President!" I had the impression you were a Hillary supporter since Edwards withdrew. Am I mistaken, or have you switched preference? If so, what made you decide to change?

You know, I'm thinking that the Democratic Party is giving Obama a free ride (wait - not a free ride, but a freer ride) because he is black. I'm refering to the superdelegates. We know that their sole purpose is to disenfranchise voters. The only possible effect that superdelegates can have on an election is to hand the nomination to someone who is not the choice of the Democratic electorate. Right? If they don't do that, then they don't do anything. (BTW, it is interesting that one party has adopted the superdelegate system, and the other party has not.) Superdelegates have been out there doing their thing for about 30 years, with no complaints from any Democrat, or from the media. Evidently, nobody believes it is wrong, in principle, for party bigshots to disenfranchise the party rank and file. Except this year. In 2008, if superdelegates have any effect at all, it will be to disenfranchise black voters. So there is pressure on the superdelegates to abdicate their privilege. It's a double standard of behavior, favoring blacks. If Obama was white, there wouldn't be any talk about superdelegates disenfranchising voters - there wasn't any such talk in 1980-2004.

Hi Walt: For me, and for many Democrats, opposition to the Iraq War is a litmus-test issue. We demanded of both Edwards and Clinton that they renounce their previous votes in support of the war before extending our support.

Edwards was willing to renounce his previous support, but Clinton has never done so. Her resistance was trumpeted by her campaign as a good trait – she is therefore not beholden to anti-war special interest groups. Nevertheless, I see her resistance as a failure to understand or appreciate the gravity of her previous votes, and a sign of significant weakness. She can make speeches announcing her opposition to the Iraq War, but her words mean nothing until she can humble herself a bit to seek our support. There is little to fear, really. We understand that there were pressures to support the Bush Administration. We won’t bite. But she is afraid – afraid of the Right and afraid of her fellow Democrats. I won’t eagerly support fearful candidates.

When Edwards withdrew, I automatically became an Obama supporter, because he was the only remaining candidate who was reliably against the war. It didn’t matter who he was. If the remaining candidates had been Hillary Clinton and the Man From Mars, I would have automatically become a Man From Mars supporter, provided he was reliably against the war.

I’ve been a little slow to warm up to Obama. I agree with NY Times columnist Paul Krugman that Obama’s health care proposals don’t go far enough, and his campaign theme of burying divisions and healing wounds strikes me as naïve. We need to sandpaper those wounds, not bandage them up. Nevertheless, he is unusually effective on the campaign trail, and so if I have to accept a crappy health care system in exchange for an end to the Iraq War, it’s a sacrifice well-worth making.

I will support Clinton if it comes down to that (but I hope it doesn’t).

The superdelegates function as a brake on popular enthusiasm and will, but even if they act this year to blunt the enthusiasm of blacks, that may not necessarily be such a bad thing. The superdelegates are supposed to be the experienced institutional memory of the party, the ones who can look past Mr. Flash In The Pan and Mrs. Ex First Lady and see how well the party’s interests are being served. Superdelegates do not dominate the system, after all, and the only reason their role is being highlighted this year is because the electorate is virtually split in half in its presidential preference, not because one candidate is black. Actually, I think there is great pressure for the superdelegates to act like weathervanes, so important is the will of the voters, so they will buck the expressed will of the voters only very reluctantly.

I would hope the superdelegates would look at the matter from a very cold-blooded, self-interested perspective, because I think that view favors Obama. Obama has shown unusual support in two regions generally hostile to Democrats – the Deep South, and the northern Rockies, and unusual weakness in normal Democratic strongholds, like the urban northeast, and California. For a superdelegate, the question is, is it worth nominating Obama to go after places that usually lean Republican, even if it means watering down usual bastions of support? It’s a complicated question, and reasonable people can disagree on the answer, but in my mind, it’s a gamble well-worth taking, and I think the superdelegates are likely to break Obama’s way for this very reason when the time finally comes for them to announce their decision. After the primaries are over, we can review how well the system worked.