Sunday, May 04, 2008
News

Who’s on first in the Democratic primaries

 

By Josh Clark

If Obama gets more votes, how is it possible for Hillary Clinton to still win the nomination?

Former President Jimmy Carter, Georgia’s biggest celebrity—bigger than Ted Turner, Herschel Walker, Ludacris and Jane Fonda combined—has publicly endorsed, not necessarily Obama, but rather the voice of the people. On April 29, Carter told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph that he doesn’t “see any reason at all to continue after June 3rd,” which, coincidentally, is the final day of the 2008 primaries.

In Carter’s opinion, Obama’s already won. Despite Sen. Hillary Clinton’s decisive win in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, Obama still leads in the popular vote, and in the support of delegates and superdelegates. The big primary season finish ends with Montana and South Dakota. Typically, these states’ primaries are a matter of formality, coming toward the end of the primary season, when the candidate has long before been decided.
  
If Carter has his way, this year won’t be any different. Montana offers 25 pledged delegates and South Dakota’s got 23 up for grabs. Even if Clinton takes each of the remaining states scheduled to hold primaries, Obama will still have won 27 to her 26 (no, we don’t have 53 states yet, but Guam and Puerto Rico both participate, and Texas was split between the two through their dual primary/caucus system).
  
Beyond Carter’s prestige as a former president, his opinion matters because he’s a superdelegate (and arguably a superduperdelegate), meaning he can cast a huge vote for Obama. But this goes both ways. If enough superdelegates go Clinton’s way at or before the last night of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Denver on August 28, she can still win the nomination. Which brings us to our next question …

2. Just what in the name of God is a superdelegate, anyway?

With respect to Nietzsche, to understand what makes a superman, one must first understand what makes a man. So too with superdelegates. When Hillary and Barack travel from state to state massaging voters, the votes those people cast at the precincts are expressed in pledged delegates.

Each state has a certain number of delegates, reflective of the size of the population. So each delegate won generally represents a sizeable portion of the voters in that delegate’s state. These delegates are pledged; by custom, they vote at the DNC the same way the voters they represent did. This, however, is not regulated by any laws, and pledged delegates can conceivably vote any way they like.

According to party rules, once a delegate count is made at the convention, if a tie emerges, it’s a free-for-all. Delegates can vote any way they want in following counts, people run wild in the aisles and boars’ heads are customarily placed on stakes as a warning to opposing camps.
  
The superdelegates are intended to calm this chaos. Rather than representing the votes of many Joe and Jane Six Packs, each of these delegates represents the vote of one person. But they hold just as much weight as a delegate won from a state. The superdelegates are essentially unique to the Democrat Party. The GOP refers to theirs decidedly less dramatically as “unpledged delegates,” and in 2008 will offer 123 of them, as opposed to the Dems’ 732.

Democratic superdelegates were born out of the 1972 convention, when activists managed to get an unelectable George McGovern the nomination. After being smashed by Nixon in the general election, the DNC came up with the idea of creating superdelegates to keep the party mainstream in charge. These coveted votes were issued to people who owed their lives and careers to the party: members of Congress, party bosses and the like. The superdelegates are meant to be an insurance policy to decide the outcome in a close race (or if the riff-raff gets uppity). Like the 2008 nomination.

3. So where do Barack and Hillary stand right now?

Currently, Barack’s leading Hillary in every category. In the popular vote, he has 14.4 million to Hillary’s 13.9 million, excluding Florida and Michigan’s uncounted contests. He’s won more delegates. He’s secured more superdelegates. He’s won more states. He’s got Jimmy Carter. But Hillary currently has the inexplicable phenomenon of momentum. Any Georgia fan (but curiously, not Tech fans) understands what momentum means. It’s that intangible force that is bestowed on an almost momentary basis to whoever is winning at the time. And winning need not be reflected in the score. It can be whoever scored most recently or whoever most recently stripped the other side of their dignity. Momentum is awarded to whoever has the crowd on their side at that moment.
     
This is where Hillary finds herself right now. After enduring trouncings left and right in pretty much every primary held in that most important month of February, and after she “misspoke” about sniper fire, it looked like Obama had smacked Clinton right out of the running. But Hillary’s a lot like Bruce Lee, defying the laws of physics and rising once again without the use of her arms.

And now she finds herself with momentum. She won Pennsylvania by 10 points when polls predicted her to win by just 3 to 4 percent of the popular vote. And with North Carolina’s May 6 primary looming in the headlights (just a month ago, many observers picked N.C. as the perfect spot for Clinton to politely bow out), Hillary has already collected major supporters among the Tar Heels and Blue Devils—before she even arrives.

Obama’s camp (which includes National Public Radio) has pointed out, however, that Pennsylvania is largely populated by the white working class (read: not entirely comfortable with a black man living in FDR’s old house). Regardless, Hillary won among those voters and, as a result, right now she’s got the momentum carrying her into the upcoming primaries and the convention. SP