The always-charming and usually insightful Susan Estrich takes an unjaundiced political insider veteran’s look at the Superdelegates.
Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
The always-charming and usually insightful Susan Estrich takes an unjaundiced political insider veteran’s look at the Superdelegates.
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"…the party, stung from a series of defeats unbroken only by the election of the then-much maligned Jimmy Carter, was convinced that too much small "d" democracy every four years, particularly as dominated on the grass roots level by the "crazies" (excuse me, the feminists and the gay and the minorities and the rest of my crowd) was leading the grown-ups in the party to view the convention as a must-miss event and the patients who were taking over the asylum to choose candidates who shouldn’t be nominated and couldn’t win."
I agree with this statement, but the problem is the crazies give the Democratic party its identity. If the crazies are not given thier voice, the coalition that defines the Democratic party cannot survive.
What a remarkable coincidence that her new viewpoint on the value of superdelegates just happens to coincide with the one viewpoint that could get her candidate elected.Â
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It’s not clear to me that this is her viewpoint; she makes the point that she opposed the superdelegates from the very beginning, but, these are the rules the party chose so they shouldn’t whine about it if it doesn’t go the way they intended.
That isn’t what she said at all Dean. She said, toward the end of her article after recounting her history of being against superdelegates that after years of campaigning for unelectable candidates she had become convinced that getting a winning candidate is the important goal of a primary process and that super delegates perform and important ‘second check’ on that process. This is highlighted by the article of her peice, "The Goal is to Win."
It is clearly an argument that despite her previous opposition to this undemocratic method, she now feels that overturning the delegate lead, and/or the popular vote is perfectly justified by super-delegates if it yeilds a more electable candidate.Â
This is of course the Clinton line, and Estrich is a Clinton supporter.  I suspect that her analysis would be different if the delegate totals were reversed.Â
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