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SUPER DELEGATE!

Ok so my sister and I had a discussion last night about the primaries/caucuses and who gets alocated how and... and what's the deal with super delegates? Much of this came up in the context my sister trying to explain how this thing worked to my brother-in-law, this being the first U.S. presidential election he's seen up close. His reaction, from what I gather, has been that of any sane individual, namely "this is a total mess and makes zero sense." So true.

Basically, the current primary system is an amalgam of compromises between political elites and rank and file party members made over the last hundred and fifty years. You can get a brief overview here. Eeach state contest results in selecting a certain number of "pledged delegates" who have promised to vote for a specific candidate. Technically they can defect at the convention, but each campaign selects the delegates it sends, so that's unlikely. In addition to these, there are "Super Delegates." These consist of all party congresspeople (House and Senate), all former presidents, vice presidents, and pres and VP nominees, current members of the DNC, current and former DNC chairs, and all governors. These "Super Delegates" are a vestige of the compromise after the 1968 convention between the progressive activist base that wanted more direct democracy in selecting the nominee and the party elites, and they wind up being around 20% of the total delagate pool. The super delegates may choose either candidate. A good explanation is available here.

As a practical matter, it would be extremely difficult to imagine a candidate that was clearly leading the race losing the nomination solely due to the super delegate vote. After all, the point is to pick a candidate that will win. If it's really REALLY close though, or if one leads in delegates and the other leads the popular vote or something, well then things would be interesting. It's not hard to imagine the kind of chaos that would ensue, or the kind of fantastic promises and favors super delegates could extract in such a situation. I hope it doesn't come to that if only because of the huge potential for asymetrical influence of political insiders.

UPDATE: Interesting speculation on an alternative scenario of super delegate influence here.

Photo from Flickr user David Chief, used under Creative Commons License