Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Superdelegate Convention?

Philip Bredesen, governor of Tennessee and himself a so-far uncommitted superdelegate, has an interesting idea: hold a convention of the superdelegates in June, after the last primary (Puerto Rico's is on 7 June). His thinking is that the superdelegates will have sufficient information by then to make an informed decision, and while some of the undecideds might like to hold off until the party convention in August, the delay and inevitable bickering will just aggravate the Democrats' divisiveness, further exhaust everybody, and hurt the general election campaign.

I think there's a lot to be said for Bredesen's suggestion, and I can't think of any real downside. If I really stretch, I can imagine one potential problem: Suppose that Clinton does well enough in the remaining contests to make another "momentum"/"(un)important states" argument, and enough superdelegates buy it so that after they vote, the delegate totals (super + pledged) are really close. Or make it even stickier: imagine that enough of the superdelegates refuse to cast votes to the point where Obama can't get the 2025 total delegates required to win. At that point, Clinton resurrects the claim that her campaign has already floated about nothing being final, even among pledged delegates, says that the August convention the only place where the official decision can really be made, and refuses to drop out. At that point, the superdelegates have lost most of their clout, the Democrats look even more divided, and all the bickering that Bredesen hopes to avoid comes roaring back, probably even more nastily.

Admittedly, I'm piling one worst case scenario on top of another here, but Bredesen's idea just sounds so reasonable I feel compelled to come up with some argument about why it won't work.

Thoughts?

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