The Superdelegates

Given the way house members are lining up behind Obama, Hillary has only one path to victory — chaos, lunacy, the strong arm and dark, secret, cloak-and-dagger bullshit.

We know, because the superdelegates themselves are admitting it, that party officials whose votes are still in play are being besieged by phone calls from the political Mount Olympus. Ed Tinsley, a county commissioner from Montana, got two calls apiece from Madeleine Albright, Chelsea Clinton and Tom Daschle. It got so intense after a while that Tinsley's friends started to prank-call him, pretending to be various Important People clamoring for his support.

"Yeah, my buddies were goofing around a little bit there," he says with a laugh. "It's slowed down some since I declared for Obama — but I still hear from the Clinton campaign, e-mails telling me Obama can't win and so on."

In California, where many superdelegates pledged to Clinton are reportedly considering changing their minds, the heat has been unrelenting. One superdelegate recently reported getting at least 100 letters from the Clinton camp insisting that she toe the line. Across the board, there have been reports of superdelegates strong-armed and badgered, with the angry exchange between Bill Richardson and the Clintons (whose supporters called him a "Judas" after he committed to Obama) being the most famous. The high number of superdelegates who refuse to discuss their preferences publicly for fear of getting on the wrong side of the winner speaks to the fear of negative consequences that surrounds this whole process.

Moreover, in the courting of superdelegates there is tremendous potential for corruption, as the system is almost totally unregulated. Craig Holman, a legislative representative at Public Citizen, describes the superdelegate system as an ethical "Wild West," one in which no rules prevent candidates from channeling favors or even money to uncommitted party officials. "This is the first time we're seeing the potential for mischief," Holman says. One easy way to buy off superdelegates, he suggests, would be to hire them as media consultants, allowing them to take a cut of the candidate's political advertising. "Buyers generally get five percent commissions," Holman says. "That's a lot of money, because these media buys can be in the millions."

The reality, though, is that no one really knows what the fuck is going on now over the phone lines. All we know is that D-day is May 31st and that between now and then — unless Hillary bows out — the orderly and rational process of primary season is going to give way to the clubs-and-stones Hobbesian jungle that is unregulated, raw politics, the politics of using any means necessary to fight your enemy. While we wait for this process to play itself out, we are as helpless as Chinese citizens waiting for the Politburo to hand them a new premier, or Catholics watching the chimney in St. Peter's Square for word of a new pope.

Should we wind up with another sideways, party-rigged result, a country that has already gone through hanging chads in 2000 and dark rumors in Ohio in 2004 may find itself wondering exactly where it stands in the hierarchy of world democracies. Above Belarus but below Nicaragua? Looking up at Zimbabwe but down at Pakistan? No matter what, we're likely looking at the last gasp of a superdelegate system that almost certainly will be reformed by next time around.

"It's undemocratic," says Holman. "It should be thrown in the trash."

"Yeah," agrees Tinsley. "People are probably going to want to take a look at changing it, no matter what happens."

In the end, whatever happens, it's impossible to get around the fact that all of this, really, is the responsibility of one person: Hillary Clinton. We headed irrevocably down this path toward a democratic crisis the moment she decided to stay in the race despite impossible mathematical odds. That is a heavy thing for one person to bring about all by herself, on purpose and with her eyes wide open. The question we all might have to start thinking about soon is Why? What the hell was she thinking? Was she trying to drag us into a Banana Republican coup scenario on purpose? Or is there something even simpler at work?

"Sometimes," says McGovern, "the candidate is the last one to know it's over."

[From Issue 1053 — May 29, 2008]