Democratic White House hopefuls look to 'super-delegates'
WASHINGTON (AFP) — With no clear winner after months of wooing voters, the tight race for the Democratic White House nomination may leave the choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to "super-delegates."
The super-delegates are party leaders and lawmakers, including all Democratic members of Congress and former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, as well as ex-vice president Al Gore.
If no candidate has a lock on the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the party's convention in August, the 796 "super-delegates" would be decisive.
Unlike "pledged" delegates chosen through primaries and caucuses, super-delegates are free to vote for whomever they chose. Many have already promised to back one candidate or another, "and most of the others will at some point before the convention," said Michael Tanner, a political analyst with the Cato Institute.
"The chances of them changing their mind at the last minute is not likely," he said.
The power given to the party bosses, not earned through the ballot box, strikes some observers as undemocratic.
For years, the Democratic nominee was chosen through deals and bargains made by party bosses. In 1960 John Kennedy emerged as the party nominee with the help of "patron" mayors Richard Daley of Chicago and Charles Buckley of New York.
After support from more radical wings of the party led to the disastrous nomination of George McGovern in 1972, who lost every state but Massachusetts and the capital Washington to Richard Nixon, the Democrats put in rules to avoid such contention.
"There was a belief that they would not want candidates who were dramatically out of sync with the rest of the party," explained William Mayer, a political scientist at Northeastern University.
The super-delegates were designed to be "sort of a safety valve," said Democratic party leader Elaine Kamarck who teaches at Harvard University.
Most US media has reported that Clinton will be the biggest beneficiary of the super-delegate system, but Obama is not so sure.
"The super-delegates, they're flexible.... If we come into the convention with more pledged delegates, I know we can make a very strong argument that our constituencies have spoken," he has said.
Mayer agreed that the party leadership would be likely to support whoever earned the most votes.
"Do the super-delegates have the capacity to resist the choice of the overwhelming majority of primary voters and caucus participants? The answer, I think, is a clear 'No'."
