To win the honors of being the Democrat on the ballot for President this November, either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama must win a majority of 4049 delegates. So, to put it another way, the first one to get to 2025 gets to claim the Gold Medal for Dems. Much has been made about how Senator Obama has been exceeding expectations, virtually in a neck-and-neck tie with Hillary at this point in the nomination contest. In fact three more states will hold their primaries today, and some say that Obama will out-delegate Clinton.
But the real question is this — are all of the primaries and caucuses being held around America by Democrats just for show? Are they just beauty contests? Is it the case that the Democratic Party may be totally misnamed — because as people are just now starting to understand, there may not be much democratic (small d) input into their nominating process.
Why is this?
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February 9th, 2008 at 12:00 am
As a Democrat, I agree with John completely. The Superdelegates were put into place after the 1972 election when McGovern won and clearly are a reaction of party bosses not wanting to let the people have the benefits or suffer the consequences of their choices. The whole thing is a small part of why most people don’t think politics matter to them, because it reinforces the false stereotype that someone else will look out for you.
February 9th, 2008 at 12:00 am
A Democrat? Oh you mean “d”emocrat.
I never knew…
Maybe we can ask for party registration when you set up a commenting account.
Red comments are Republicans, blue ones are “d”emocrats…
February 9th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Jon, The dominance of superdelegates also explains the cynical Democrat offer to let decline to state voters vote in their presidential primary. Since their votes cannot change the outcome at the Democrat convention it is only a public relations gesture.
February 9th, 2008 at 12:00 am
You still have the best of the blogs Jon, even a Dem has to admit that.
Besides, your blog takes more shots at Republican elected officials (ala Jerry Lewis) than any Democratic ones, so I have to keep track of the attacks. jk!
On a more appropriate note, I disagree with either party not letting independents vote. I don’t think there was anything sinister in Democratic motives, they just didn’t think they could have a contested convention and all the big shots wanted to make sure they could go and enjoy the parties, so they guaranteed themselves seats.
POlitical Parties were created a few years after our young Republic started holding elections over the objections of several of our founding fathers with the argument being made that an ongoing organization was needed to make sure voters were more informed and also to stop the creation of a permanent elite ruling class.
Since then, I think too many people on both sides have used the party structure to artificially divide the electorate and today we have a class of elected officials many of whom would be perfectly happy to be part of a ruling class and certainly have a view of their roles that is far removed from Madison’s ideal of elected officials as “Store clerks working for absentee owners.”
February 12th, 2008 at 12:00 am
I would love to see Obama win the majority of the available delegates in the primaries, only to see him get screwed by the insider delegates at convention. The chaos and division that would follow would provide such tasty tears of bitterness.
We can’t really be that lucky, can we?