Electoral scholars and pundits appear to be reaching consensus that the Democratic nomination could very well be decided by the superdelegates. Writing in today’s New York Times, AEI scholars Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein project that neither Obama nor Clinton is “likely to come close to the 2,025 delegates needed to win the nomination” from their pledged delegate counts. The key to the nomination, they write, is winning enough support from the 796 superdelegates.
Even though Democratic Party insider and superdelegate herself Donna Brazile said on CNN, “If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit the Democratic Party,” Mann and Ornstein express faith that the superdelegates will fulfill their purpose and produce a candidate behind whom Democrats will unify. At this point, anyway, that process seems more likely to produce bitterness than unity.
Meanwhile, on the pages of today’s Wall Street Journal, Newt Gingrich opines that, given the seeming stalemate, the only way to produce a legitimate Democratic presidential candidate is for the party to permit Michigan and Florida to hold do-over primary elections. Excluding those states’ delegations from the nominating process or including them and awarding the majority of those delegates to Clinton (who won those technically-meaningless-at-the-time elections after breaking her pledge not to campaign there) boils down to a choice between disenfranchising voters in two states or allowing party insiders to run roughshod over the nominating process. That, Gingrich claims, would constitute a “tainted or stolen” nomination, which would potentially “delegitimize the election itself and its outcome.” Gingrich implores: “The voters — not the party insiders — have the moral authority to choose the nominee.”
I agree with Newt that voters have the moral authority (and having primary elections in the first place honors that truth). But this is an issue between and among a group of people called Democrats, who are members of the same political party by choice. This is a nominating election, which is administered according to party rules, which have been agreed to — at least tacitly — by all party members. One of the rules is that there are superdelegates, whose opinions carry more weight then Joe and Jane Democrats’.
In the cases of Florida and Michigan, party rules were broken and consequently, members’ privileges were revoked. Voters haven’t been disenfranchised; party members have been disciplined.
How the issue is “resolved” will say nothing about the legitimacy of the general election and its outcome. How could a McCain victory in November be delegitimized by Democratic Party nominating procedures? Even more to the point, how could a Clinton or Obama victory in November be delegitimized when the proper rules and processes yield either her or him as the party’s nominee?
The best way to “resolve” the issue is to stay the course. Rules are in place to guide the process. That doesn’t mean there won’t be discord; there probably will be. But changing the rules now, at this late date, to avoid implementing the original party nominating rules would be the real scandal.
