RobertEmmet

By Robert Schlesinger

My brother Stephen — the smartest Clinton partisan that I know personally — has a good piece over on HuffPo that gives a fine historical perspective on the superdelegate question, and whether the leader in pledged delegates should as a matter of course become the party nominee. The problem all Clintonites face, however, is how to get there from here.

Stephen writes:

In 1912, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Champ Clark, went to the Baltimore convention with the largest number of delegates, around 440, Woodrow Wilson was second with 324, trailed by a few others — with two thirds of the convention vote required for nomination. Champ Clark was not then allowed to proclaim himself victorious simply because he led the pack. Rather the proceedings went through almost 50 ballots over a week’s period that, after much maneuvering, resulted in Wilson accumulating enough delegates to secure the nomination.

In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt arrived at the Democratic Convention this time with the most delegates — having won them through some primaries and some Democratic state organizations — but still short of the requisite two-thirds majority. Despite this lead, the party did not hand him the nomination. He had to proceed through four ballots to achieve it.

Finally in the 1952 Democratic race, Senator Estes Kefauver went through the primary process, beat President Truman in New Hampshire, won Wisconsin, Nebraska, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland and entered the Chicago convention with a lead of 257 votes, with four other contenders trailing behind, including Adlai Stevenson. On the first actual ballot, Kefauver held the lead but by now Stevenson had crept up to second place. Then ultimately Stevenson grabbed the designation from Kefauver on the third ballot — all of this, despite his failure to contest a single primary, with no accumulated Democratic votes compared to those of Kefauver’s, and in spite of his late entry into the race. But the party thought he would be the better nominee.

Stephen goes on to argue that this history bolsters the Clinton contention that a pledged-delegate plurality is less important than the will of the party. Where Wilson, FDR and Stevenson had to convince smoke-filled, back-room elites, Clinton or Obama will have to reckon with the TV-lights which the elected elites (ie superdelegates) have focused on them.

Which brings me back to the question of how to get there from here. The math doesn’t add up. And that’s fine. It doesn’t have to. But … Obama still has — to use a football analogy — the ball, the lead and all of his timeouts with time running down. Hillary cannot win without him turning the ball over. Put it another way: The superdelegates are (notwithstanding that they’re Democrats) smart enough that they’re not going to cast aside delegate-leader Obama simply on the basis of any Clintonite argument. As Mrs. Clinton might observe, words here are cheap — it’s deeds that matter. And unless the very junior senator from Illinois affirmatively does something to signal a complete electoral collapse — say, wearing an al Qaeda flag pin at his next rally — he remains hard to beat: Are Democratic party leaders really prepared to tell the inspired Obama-ites (and especially the black voters so crucial to party success) that they weren’t bright enough to choose a nominee themselves.

No — the only way they decide to pull the quarterberack is he starts tossing interceptions. It could still happen, but time is running out.