Rumors of Her Death Are Greatly Exaggerated (JM)

Oh Slate delegate counter... you have caused so very many problems for me, including eating up an inordinate amount of time I could, say, have been doing something social instead of playing with slide bars on my computer. Yes, you make Hillary's future pretty bleak as Jonathan Alter pointed out. However, you also do not count Florida and Michigan.

As it stands FL and MI would give Hillary a 90 delegate advantage, which is more than enough to give her a real shot going forward. However, it seems unlikely these delegates will be seated, despite the many good reasons they ought to be. Instead we might very well see new primaries at the end of May or beginning of June. There is no reason to believe that these both won't be incredibly strong Hillary states. Perhaps not a 90 delegate spread, but a strong spread nonetheless. I see no way in which anyone can argue that this is not a fair solution (I look forward to several inane e-mails that say "rules are rules").

This will put the delegate count extraordinarily close. At that point I am perfectly comfortable letting the superdelegates decide the election. I mean to be fair, I trust party elders far more than I trust less than ten percent of Iowa voters. Caucuses are undemocratic, superdelegates are undemocratic, it's really all the same. It's a whole new ballgame now, and that's nothing but good for the Democratic Party.

Let's Not Forget About Mayor McCheese (JM)

Sometimes I am just completely jealous when someone comes up with an amazing idea. Extreme Mortman has been doing a series of Meet The Superdelegates wherein they've been profiling fictional political functionaries and their likely position regarding their superdelegate votes. Amongst their best has been a profile of Maude and Sheriff Buford T. Justice, but the winner is clearly their assessment of where Mayor McCheese stands on the whole Hillary-Obama divide.

Sometimes I wish I could travel back in time and steal someone else's idea... or the 2018 Sports Almanac, a la Back to the Future, Part II. By the way, is there any chance Biff Tanner is not a McCain guy?

Superdelegates Should Decide on Their Own (JM)

Mostly I am using the post to link to an excellent op-ed piece in the NYT from Geraldine Ferraro about why superdelegates ought to vote for the best representative for the party, not just follow the delegate count. Her position is quite clear and well argued. She points out that this not a terribly democratic process to begin with, that at most 15 percent of registered Democrats voted the primary/caucuses and that because some of the caucuses are open it is not exactly a measure of Democratic will. I found this bit of her argument particularly noteworthy:

Perhaps because I have endorsed Mrs. Clinton, I have noticed that most of the people complaining about the influence of the superdelegates are supporters of Mr. Obama. I can’t help thinking that their problem with the superdelegates may not be that they’re “unrepresentative,” but rather that they are perceived as disproportionately likely to support Mrs. Clinton.

And I am watching, with great disappointment, people whom I respect in the Congress who endorsed Hillary Clinton — I assume because she was the leader they felt could best represent the party and lead the country — now switching to Barack Obama with the excuse that their constituents have spoken.

I may be a cynic, but I’m a fairly knowledgeable political cynic. If Mr. Obama wins the nomination, those members are undoubtedly concerned that they would be inviting a primary challenge in their next re-election campaign by failing to support his candidacy.

But if they are actually upset over the diminished clout of rank-and-file Democrats in the presidential nominating process, then I would love to see them agitating to force the party to seat the delegates elected by the voters in Florida and Michigan. In those two states, the votes of thousands of rank-and-file party members will not be counted because their states voted on dates earlier than those authorized by the national party.

Read the entire column, it is worth it regardless of your position. The storms a'brewing, and if Clinton wins Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania it will happen. Get ready for an exciting convention folks.

Foot-in-Mouth Disease (JM)

According to Ben Smith at Politico, Clinton adviser Joel Ferguson said the following:

"Superdelegates are not second-class delegates," says Joel Ferguson, who will be a superdelegate if Michigan is seated. "The real second-class delegates are the delegates that are picked in red-state caucuses that are never going to vo, te Democratic."

I mean seriously, there might be an argument here, but this is just terrible politics. You can attack the meaning of results in states like Utah and Idaho, but seriously it is offensive and silly to refer to their delegates as second-class delegates. The argument for delegates making up their own minds is pretty straightforward. The statistical significance of the population of the party voting in primaries (or even more so in caucuses) is barely representative of the Democratic Party in large. The results are in no way indicative of what party members actually want, but instead represent the interests of an intense subpopulation of the party. Thus, superdelegates provide an importance balance, a way to clarify statistical noise. In many ways, they are better prepared to make a long term decision for the party as a whole.

That said, it was tremendously stupid to make such a comment and Hillary really needs to find a better way to control the comments of her spin people.