As far as Barack Obama’s campaign is concerned, superdelegates — party insiders, lawmakers, and establishment players — should not dictate the party’s nominating process, especially if it means overriding the will of voters who participated in the party’s primaries and caucuses.
As far as Hillary Clinton’s campaign is concerned, all bets are off.
Hillary Clinton will take the Democratic nomination even if she does not win the popular vote, but persuades enough superdelegates to vote for her at the convention, her campaign advisers say.
The New York senator, who lost three primaries Tuesday night, now lags slightly behind her rival, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, in the delegate count. She is even further behind in “pledged” delegates, those assigned by virtue of primaries and caucuses.
But Clinton will not concede the race to Obama if he wins a greater number of pledged delegates by the end of the primary season, and will count on the 796 elected officials and party bigwigs to put her over the top, if necessary, said Clinton’s communications director, Howard Wolfson.
Now, I suspect the response from Obama supporters will be less than kind. If Clinton successfully fights for the nomination after coming in second among earned delegates, the talk will no doubt be that she “stole” the race.
But that’s not exactly the situation here. The Democratic National Committee, decades ago, added superdelegates to the process with the express intention of creating a “check” against popular will. Hillary Clinton didn’t create this system, she’s just competing in it. If she can claim the nomination through superdelegates, instead of through actual primaries and caucuses, it makes more sense to blame a flawed process than the candidate and her campaign.
Clinton is, to borrow a phrase, in it to win it. If that means playing hardball, taking what the NYT described today as “potentially incendiary steps,” and overriding voters who participated in primaries and caucuses, she’s within her rights to do so. It may wreak havoc within the party, but it’s a reminder that the party shouldn’t have come up with this process in the first place.
She’s playing by the rules (for the most part; that Florida/Michigan argument is far sketchier). Whether the rules are reasonable is a different argument altogether. Whether Clinton should “do the right thing” and step aside for the candidate who did better in the primaries and caucuses is a different argument altogether. But it’s hardly reasonable to blame Clinton for doing everything possible to win, exploiting every available opportunity. That’s what she’s supposed to do.
That said, the Clinton campaign hasn’t quite nailed down its message. Clinton’s communications director, Howard Wolfson, told reporters yesterday, “We don’t make distinctions between delegates chosen by million of voters in a primary and those chosen between tens of thousands in caucuses.” Around the same time, Clinton’s pollster and senior strategist, Mark Penn, was saying the opposite.
Mrs. Clinton’s aides said they would also argue to superdelegates that they should give less deference to a lead from Mr. Obama because much of that had been built up in states where there were caucuses, which tend to attract far fewer voters than primaries, where Mrs. Clinton has tended to do better than she has done in caucuses.
“I think for superdelegates, the quality of where the win comes from should matter in terms of making a judgment about who might be the best general election candidate,” said Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s senior campaign adviser.
I guess we’re back to asterisks again — some delegates and victories are “better” than others.
The Clinton campaign also touched on a point that’s very hard to resolve. Superdelegates should vote however they want, but if they were inclined to go with the will of the voters, the next question is which voters. If you’re John Kerry, for example, do you back Clinton because she had more support from Dems in Massachusetts, or do you back Obama because he has more support from Dems nationwide? Different superdelegates will reach different conclusions about this, complicating matters further.
One more thing: the AP’s Ron Fournier noted that Clinton, based on current counts, leads Obama among superdelegates, but she shouldn’t take that to the bank.
“I would make the assumption that the … superdelegates she has now are the Clintons’ loyal base. A superdelegate who is uncommitted today is clearly going to wait and see how this plays out. She’s at her zenith now,” said Democratic strategist Jim Duffy, who is not aligned with either campaign. “Whatever political capital or IOUs that exist, she’s already collected.”
Something to consider.