Superdelegate Tinfoil Hat

Even Superdelegates Wear Tinfoil

From the looks of the math, neither Obama nor Clinton will be able to win the Democratic nomination solely with pledged delegates won during the primaries and caucuses. Both will need superdelegate support to win, and that prospect has folks on all sides foaming at the mouth. "What about the will of the voters?" is the cry.

There’s just one problem: What does "the will of the voters" mean?

Consider the possibilities. Should a superdelegate support the person who carried their district? Maybe the candidate who won the majority of their state’s pledged delegation, or whoever got the most popular votes in that state. Those who think in national terms might look to the national leader in pledged delegates, or perhaps the national popular vote leader. Maybe they’ll look to the candidate who won the most states, or the candidate with the best recent polling numbers. (Oh, but which poll?) . . .

You get the idea. The "will of the voters" can be a slippery thing.

Since both candidates will need superdelegate support to win, says Eleanor Clift, we come to tinfoil hat country:

The decision will then fall to the superdelegates, elected officials and party people often demonized in the media as hacks or backroom operators. A majority of them will swing behind one or the other candidate—likely Hillary Clinton—boosting her over the top even if she lags behind Barack Obama in the pledged delegate count.

And they will do this dastardly deed behind closed doors, in the electronic equivalent of the smoke-filled room, plotting over cell phones and making their decision based on implied favors and self-interest. This is the nightmare scenario. The good news for Democrats is that the excitement of two historic candidates generated hundreds of thousands of new voters; the bad news is half of them won’t show up in November.

So what’s a poor superdelegate to do?

Clift goes on to note that the superdelegates might simply punt.

What happens if the superdelegates are just like the rest of the voters—i.e., they can’t definitively decide between these two candidates? "What happens if they split the superdelegates?" asks an adviser to the Clinton campaign. The roughly 350 superdelegates who have not yet endorsed are all free agents. There’s nothing that says they have to act in concert, and they’ll work to avoid anything that fuels conspiracy theories. "My real worry is there is no back room," says this adviser. Clinton says she’ll go all the way to the convention in August. If there’s a stalemate, the superdelegates could decide to pass on the first ballot to test the candidates’ strength at that juncture. We could then be way back to the future, the first time in the modern reform age that a candidate is not chosen on the first ballot.

That unnamed adviser, and the dozens of others thinking similar thoughts in both campaigns, might have it exactly wrong. Instead of this being a worry, it may just be the answer to the problem.

The thought of 350 superdelegates working in concert to avoid anointing a nominee on the first ballot may just be the solution to handing the post-nomination discussions over to the Aluminum Association. The superdelegates could decide to vote for neither Obama nor Clinton on the first ballot, and return the decision to the entire convention, thus eliminating Clift’s nightmare scenario. Now everyone’s vote is up for grabs on the subsequent balloting — either to choose one of the two, or look for someone else.

If I were a superdelegate, I’d be as concerned with the process as much as the outcome. In this case, having an open debate on the convention floor might be one way out of the hole that the two campaigns seem intent on digging. Would it be messy? Sure, and it likely would take more than a couple ballots to resolve — but it would be a lot cleaner than the appearance of a few superdelegates scheming to choose the nominee prior to the convention.

And I’d love to hear speaker after speaker getting up in front of the convention, telling us exactly why McCain and the GOP need to get tossed out of DC as they make their cases for their favorite candidates — especially since not having a "presumptive nominee" will guarantee wall to wall media coverage of the whole event.

(h/t aquadhere for the photo of the glamorous tinfoil headgear that every superdelegate will be fighting to wear)

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