Democrat 'superdelegates' suddenly popular in tight race
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Bombarded with non-stop phone calls and old friends reappearing, Democratic "superdelegates" have suddenly become the focus of a massive lobbying effort in the tight race for the party's presidential nomination between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
"We all have been bombarded with emails from everybody and their mamas," longtime Democratic party strategist Donna Brazile, one of the 796 special independent delegates, told the New York Times.
"Like 'Auntie Donna, you're a superdelegate!' My niece called me today to lobby me. I didn't know what to say."
Efforts to woo the party officials, members of Congress and former presidents who make up the superdelegates have intensified as neither Senator Clinton nor Senator Obama appears likely to capture the nomination in the primaries ahead of the party's August national convention in Denver, Colorado.
For Clinton, the best approach is the family approach: husband and former president Bill Clinton -- a superdelegate himself -- and daughter Chelsea seem strapped to telephones trying to convince the party elite to back her.
The Obama camp's charm offensive is coordinated by former Senate majority head Tom Daschle and 2004 losing presidential candidate Senator John Kerry -- both also superdelegates.
Superdelegates can choose whichever candidate they like to represent the party in the November 4 presidential election -- unlike delegates chosen in the primaries, who are committed proportionately to the winning candidate.
But that does not mean superdelegates do not feel huge pressure from family, friends and everyone else.
Marty Kaplan, a communications professor at the University of Southern California, says that for the two camps, it is all about "how to make love" to each of these chosen people: to find the secret thing that will make them commit to their side.
Superdelegate Vince Powers, a Nebraska Democratic Party official, said his phone began ringing as soon as the candidate he backed, John Edwards, dropped out of the race on January 30.
First the Clinton campaign called. Then it was Bill Clinton himself. And then Daschle, on Obama's behalf.
He told them all the same thing: he would back whichever candidate appeared in Nebraska before the state's February 9 nominating caucuses.
It was Obama who came, two days before the vote. He won both the majority of the state's elected delegates and Powers's backing.
Maryland Senator Ben Cardin also suddenly found he had a lot of bosom buddies.
"I've talked to Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton's a friend," he told MSNBC television. "Hillary Clinton's a friend. Barack Obama's a friend, and all I have talked with."
Even so, Cardin is not committing himself just yet.
In fact, about half of the superdelegates have already declared themselves: 242 are backing Clinton, while 156 support Obama, according to election watch website RealClearPolitics.
Their backing has been crucial to Clinton's keeping up her fight with Obama after he racked up eight straight primary victories in the past week.
With Clinton ahead in superdelegates now, Obama's team is banking on the rest of them to follow the way the party's popular vote falls in the primaries.
"If we end up with the most states and the most pledged delegates, and the most voters in the country, then it would be problematic for political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters," Obama said recently.
Brazile has said more bluntly that if that happens -- if the superdelegates overturn the popular vote -- then she will slam the door on her party.
