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Superdelegates Part II: WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!

Nobody seems to have caught my last post about superdelegates. And nobody has said anything about Belle's post about the general disaster that is our electoral system.

But the fact is, things are messed up. In my last post, I said that things were looking like the superdelegates are going to decide. I'm not alone in this opinion. Here's a Washington Post political commentator, with actual numbers:

We've done a bad job of explaing this, but it is now basically mathematically impossible for either Clinton or Obama to win the nomination through the regular voting process (meaning the super-delegates decide this one, baby!).
Here's the math. There are 3,253 pledged delegates, those doled out based on actual voting in primaries and caucuses. And you need 2,025 to win the nomination.
To date, about 55% of those 3,253 delegates have been pledged in the voting process -- with Clinton and Obamb roughly splitting them at about 900 delegates a piece.
That means there are now only about 1,400 delegates left up for grabs in the remaining states and territories voting.
So, do the math. If they both have about 900 pledged delegates so far, they need to win more than 1,100 of the remaining 1,400 delegates to win the nomination through actual voting.
Ain't gonna happen, barring a stunning scandal or some new crazy revelation. So, they'll keep fighting this thing out, each accumulating their chunk of delegates, one of them holding a slight edge and bothing finishing the voting process with 1,600 or so delegates.
And then the super delegates decide this thing.
That's the math.

Do you realize what this means? Seriously, we are screwed, people. Let's have a show of hands. Who even knows who the superdelegates are? [Silence.] Who knows where you would go to find out who the superdelegates are? [Silence.] Almost nobody. The electoral college is an ugly problem, but at least people are aware of it. The Supreme Court's election theft is an ugly problem, but at least people are aware of it.

But let's talk pragmatic politics for a moment here. Assume, plausibly, that in a general Obama beats McCain beats Clinton. Then the democratic superdelegates get to pick the next president. Let's say this again. A bunch of random party shitheads are probably going to tell you who your next president is going to be? Are you mad about that? At all?

Full post as published by Law and Letters on February 08, 2008 (boomark / email).