Why do so many of Hillary Clinton's superdelegates remain invested in her struggling candidacy, and why (for the most part, anyway) are they resisting the growing trend of switching to Obama, or at least to a neutral position?
It is possible--maybe even highly possible--that they have literally invested in Hillary. Much has been made of the tendency of superdelegates who are elected officials to follow the Clinton and Obama money. These superdelegates tend to support the candidate whose PAC had donated the most money to them. But what about the other superdelegates, the so-called "party leaders" of the "Party Leaders and Elected Officials" who make up approximately half of the superdelegates? Why are so many party leaders sticking with Hillary while even Clinton strategist Mark Penn is distancing himself from a campaign that gives off a strong impression that it is circling the drain, or maybe even imploding?
I don't have any hard stats on this yet, but my hunch (backed up by some preliminary anecdotal information) is that some superdelegates have poured so much into the campaign that they are loath to cut their losses. Take, for example, superdelegate Carol Pensky of Maryland. Pensky and her husband, co-founder of the Washington, DC area-based Britches of Georgetown clothing chain David Pensky donated the federal maximum for individual contributions to Clinton's presidential run over a year ago, in January of 2007. In addition, Pensky also apparently spent a serious chunk of social capital convincing several of her moneyed friends and acquaintances to do likewise. Pensky is a Hillraiser, responsible for at least $100,000 in individual contributions to Clinton's White House run.
When I contacted her on behalf of HuffPost's OffTheBus Superdelegate Transparency Project, Pensky declined an interview, so her precise thinking on the matter is unclear, but I'm guessing that not all of Pensky's "friends" gave simply from the goodness of their gold-plated hearts. Unraveling the possible motivations of all of the major donors to presidential campaigns is an impossible task, of course, but when complete, the Superdelegate Transparency Project will make it possible to uncover how many of these so called "party leader" superdelegates are major donors or even Hillraisers. If Clinton decides to stay in the race through Pennsylvania I intend to undertake just such an investigation. Stay tuned for further dispatches on the subject.