Since Democrats don't employ winner-take-all primaries and caucuses, why should the superdelegates?
Just thinking out loud here (I'm neither a Clinton nor Obama partisan), but take, say, Texas. Mrs. Clinton won the primary (but not -- one's head spins -- the caucus) there 51-47. If I understand those who advocate for superdelegates following the voters instead of their individual consciences, Texas-based superdelegates (35 of them, according to the Houston Chronicle) should all throw their support to Mrs. Clinton.
But wouldn't it be more in keeping with how Democrats have run the primaries for Mrs. Clinton to then get, say, 18 superdelegates (roughly 51 percent) and Obama 16 (roughly 47 percent)?
That's fine, because we do not have the time to ponder great problems or decide which wording a law should have. We voted for these "clowns" to take care of that so that we do not have to take care of that, because we are
a) LAZY
b) uninformed
c) busy with something else
d) unwilling to share the consequences.
The same guidelines hold true for the automated delegates, aka superdelegates. They are bigshots from the Democratic Party nationwide. Each state (except Florida and Michigan) has a number of superdelegates and they are unpledged = they are free to choose the candidate they like. They are free in that decision, just as congressmen are supposed to make politics for us, instead of asking us all the time what they have to do.
Early on, Obama tried to change these rules, by demanding that the superdelegates should go to the winner. Since he had only little standing among these party bigshots, he had to spend over 600.000 $ to buy himself some delegates, but putting pressure on them is so much easier. If they just go with their constituencies, what is the purpose of them?
Their job, as I understand it, is to make sure that the candidate with the best shot at winning the election is picked.
Not the most popular one.
Not the one with the most states to his/her name.
Not the most enthusiastic one.
Not the black/white, male/female one, but the best one, the candidate that can win against McCain.
Imagine that you are a baseball coach in the World Series. Would you pick a player, solely based on the fact that he played a good season so far, or do you look who is best for the current situation?
Obama is trying to tell us that we should not care that much about the World Series, which is still 7-8 months away. I think that the superdelegates should pick the best candidate, instead of the one who cries the loudest and the longest.
In fact, it wouldn't be fair for superdelegates to vote strictly in adherence to the state's pledged delegates, because that would then skew the states population-based delegate allotment.
Hopefully the lesson learned from this is that the superdelegate system causes more problems than it solves.
One view has been that the superdelegates should see if someone has emerged with a clear overall delegate victory, and if so vote for that candidate. That is not as unreasonable as it might sound (in the sense of making one wonder why they exist). Had Edwards stayed in longer there would be a real possibility of nobody who could win a first round ballot, and the existence of superdelegates would make it possible to end the voting in the first round. Plus the proportional system makes leads look smaller than they actually are. The current claim that Obama has a razor thin margin is nonsense based on the fact that the proportional system artificially props up losing candidates. It is not that states like Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania are being undercounted. They are simply being counted in the same way as all of the states that Obama won. And any few states will not tend to be decisive. The superdelegates could fix this problem of the race appearing closer than it is.
Another argument that some superdelegates have made, mostly elected officials, is that where their electorate has made it clear who they favor, it would be wrong for them to vote against that will. This seldom applies at the state level, but is more likely to occur in large states in which someone represents a very specific portion of the eletorate. And that is reasonable enough.
A third view is that each should pick the candidate that they think is best according to whatever criteria they think is important. Although even here the question of what is likely to tear the party apart is the kind of criteria which they might well want to consider. So the appearance of overturning the will of the people cannot be ignored even by delegates who favor this route.
I agree thinking that all of the delegates of a particular state should follow the preference of that state as a whole does not have much appeal.
Geez. What is so hard about this to understand?