On Wednesday morning, following her loss in the Wisconsin primary, Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign introduced a new website titled "The Delegate Hub," in which super delegates, the nearly 800 Democratic Party insiders with a vote at the convention, were referred to as "automatic delegates"
The re-framing, which had actually begun a week earlier in emails and interviews, was a strategic decision on the Clinton campaign's behalf to alter the perception that superdelegates had unreasonable sway over the Democratic nomination process.
"Automatic delegates come from all 56 states and territories," the site reads. "These DNC members are activists and grassroots supporters who are focused on helping Democrats win at all levels of elective office. There is no difference between pledged delegates and automatic delegates."
But will a simple renaming of superdelegates work?
The Huffington Post asked two consultants, Frank Luntz, a Republican message guru, and Tad Devine, a former Democratic delegate-counter, for their takes on the term "automatic delegates." While both saw the need for the recalibration, neither portended much success for the new term.
Frank Luntz: "They should be called electabilty delegates. That would imply that these are the people close to the voters and that they matter to the election. It gets beyond the idea that there is something special with these people and focuses on the objectives of the Democratic Party, which is to win elections.
"An automatic delegate doesn't explain why they exist. It doesn't give purpose to their existence or for their creation..."
Tad Devine: "I would imagine that these superdelegates have taken a lot of heat out there. And I imagine that the Clinton people want to create a new language to take some heat off these people. ... If you are sitting in these focus groups and listening to people talk about this process they are probably hearing a lot of frustration about these superdelegates, and if you are relying on them for your nomination you will try to take the edge off of how voter feel about these people.
If it were me, and I wanted to give them a new name, I would give them the name they have in the rules ["un-pledged," "party leader," and "elected official" delegates]... Why not just call them un-pledged versus pledged?"