Vicious personal attacks. Tears. Hope. Change. All of it has transformed the normally insipid process of presidential politics into a bearable spectacle.
And nothing adds drama like a close race. So the entertainment value will only ratchet up if, as many suggest, superdelegates ultimately decide the Democratic Party’s nominee for president.
What is a superdelegate? Well, a bunch of unpledged elected officials and party operatives in the Democratic Party who possess far more power than you or I. Folks like governors, senators, mayors and party chairpersons.
The idea of having superdelegates is to create party unity at the convention by buffering delegate margins. It also gives party leadership a disproportionate sway in the final choice, just in case the mob goes off the rails and picks Dennis Kucinich to lead them.
The idea of superdelegates has left some activists in the Democratic Party dyspeptic. The thought of an infinitesimal group holding 19 percent of the party’s power flies in the pious face of all that is “democratic.” But superdelegates aren’t necessarily as appalling as you may think. Especially if they do their job right.
In 1968, Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination with some indispensable help from party bosses. Afterwards, a commission was set up to re-organize the process and allow rank-and-file members to hold more sway. This led to the candidacies of George McGovern and the unknown Jimmy Carter.
Yet, by 1980, the party establishment had had enough of the sacrilege and instituted superdelegates to wrestle back control from the rabble. Sure, Gary Hart may have won 16 primaries in 1984, but the eventual nominee, Walter Mondale, had already locked up most of the 700 superdelegates available to him.
A mere vanity appointment since then, superdelegates are now hearing from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, trading favors and making promises in an effort to round up as many of these political players as they can.
And though there is something to be said for the ability to pull together coalitions, backroom dealing isn’t exactly what voters are looking for this time around.
The larger question being asked, though, is this: Do superdelegates have a moral obligation to vote the will of their constituents or their own conscience?
A perfect case is Denver’s congresswoman, Diana DeGette. She has endorsed Clinton, who, in turn, named her national co-chair of the campaign’s Health Care Policy Task Force. DeGette’s Democratic voters in Denver, however, picked Obama by a substantial margin.
Despite the consternation of Obama supporters in Denver, DeGette wouldn’t be disenfranchising her constituents by casting a vote for Clinton. The superdelegate has no obligation to represent his or her district, only herself.
Moreover, elected officials are under no commitment to poll voters every time they support a bill or candidate, anyway. If they were, we wouldn’t need elected officials — only polls and robots.
David Axelrod, an Obama strategist, recently explained that he believed “the role of the superdelegate is to act as, sort of, a party elder. These are elected officials from across the country and they’re supposed to exercise their judgment as to what would be best for the party.”
Establishment types seem to agree with this definition. And party elders are important. Quite often they are privy to more information about candidates, having worked with them, and are equipped with a better understanding of the political landscape — more realism, less wide-eyed idealism.
The thing is, active Democrats seem to be sick of realism. So party elders would do themselves a huge favor by allowing average voters to decide on this, one of the most watched races in the party’s history.
Well, if they want to remain superdelegates in the future.
Reach columnist David Harsanyi at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
