Rob Fournier at the AP reminds us that the Superdelegates are not a monolithic bloc, and many have their own agendas:
Never count the Clintons out. They are brilliant politicians who defied conventional wisdom countless times in Arkansas and Washington. But time is running out.
...
Clinton should find little comfort in the fact that she has secured 242 superdelegates to Obama's 160.
"I would make the assumption that the ... superdelegates she has now are the Clintons' loyal base. A superdelegate who is uncommitted today is clearly going to wait and see how this plays out. She's at her zenith now," [Democratic strategist Jim] Duffy said. "Whatever political capital or IOUs that exist, she's already collected."
Note what Jim Duffy says isn't just that the SDs might swing to Obama, but what influences them:
"Whatever political capital or IOUs that exist, she's already collected."
Let's focus on that for a moment.
I'm willing to concede that voters don't always make the right choices (see also: Republicans). I'm also willing to concede that sometimes the primary electorate screws up and nominates good people who make bad candidates, and bad people who make good candidates, and we're all stuck with the results.
That's democracy: deal with it.
Given the option between having the say of the people in determining our political destiny diminished while reducing the chances that we make a bad decision, or taking our chances betting on the wisdom of the public to make responsible decisions that reflect our ambitions and values, I'll take the people over the powerful any day of the week. I'm a democrat, and I'm a Democrat.
The superdelegate system is predicated on the opposite idea. Because the people might want to nominate someone the leadership doesn't think can win an election or govern to their liking, our party has decided to create what amounts to a form of veto power for the political elite. In sum, the people nominally empowered to promote the interests of the rank-and-file of our party reserve the right to disregard our preferences and input, in favor of their own.
If I believed that nothing more than enlightened benevolence was guiding the superdelegates in their choices, I'd be less concerned about the system.
The problem is that the superdelegate system is inherently small-r republican, in that it's based on the presumption that the voters can't choose their own leaders without the benevolent and enlightened minds of party leaders to direct us.
But let's remember--these are also the political elites who, in many cases, will end up comprising the next Democratic administration. The potential for horse-trading and buying favor is just too great to ignore in a situation like this. In government, there are provisions that strictly control what sort of quid-pro-quo arrangements can be made. Nominally, the party has similar protections. But how exactly do we expect those protections to be enforced, when the people supposed to enforce them are the ones who stand to benefit most from their violations, and benefit least from reporting them to the public?
Forgive my philosophizing, but in a sense this is the problem with any form of republicanism: the concentration of power inherently makes easier the concentration of corruption. When power is widely diffused, it becomes harder to successfully consolidate enough of it to act in a way that the many would disapprove of. And whereas the pledged delegates are there to represent the voters who have empowered them to speak on their behalf at the Convention, the superdelegates are exercising a power that is given by the insiders to other insiders, for the purpose of maintaining the strong presence of political elites in the process.
So while we debate the superdelegates' role in the horse race that is the nomination contest, let's remember that the real objection can't just be that they might support a candidate you don't like over one that you do. While it's too late for us to do anything to overhaul the system in this election, our future reforms have to start with the idea that the principles of increased democracy should be the basis of party systems.
Our objection must be that an inherently republican system shouldn't determine the fate of our Democratic Party.