Legal Commentary

Geraldine Ferraro's op-ed about superdelegacy in the New York Times today is misguided in many ways.  David Ponet and I have a rival op-ed in the Legal Times today on the subject; you can download the pretty PDF version from this link: Download ponet_leib_22508.pdf.  Rob Rogers blogged about some of our differences here.  We have quite different views about what superdelegates must do as a matter of political morality.  Although we agree with Ferraro that "super-duper" delegates without any real political responsibilities to actual geographically-circumscribed constituents may endorse whomever they think is best for the party, we tend to think that that decision cannot be made without some effort to tether their endorsements to the views of Democratic party members at the time of the convention.  Moreover, we think that pre-committing as a superdelegate is actually a problem -- and should not be applauded.  We also have a strong disagreement about what sitting office-holders must do; we don't think they are as free as Clinton and Ferraro maintain to disregard their constituents.  Indeed, we argue that office-holding superdelegates have a responsibility to the Republicans and independents in their districts as well.  But we veer from the Obama camp in arguing that superdelegates (whether of the office-holding or super-duper variety) cannot be thought of as simple agents for the rank-and-file; their job is to do more than follow the election returns, a strategy that has several problems that we expose in our column.

No suprise that the New York Times ran a Clinton-friendly interpretation of the role of superdelegates -- and on a day when they are attempting to be alarmist (on the front page) about Obama getting assasinated.  Doesn't the paper of record have any shame?