Super Delegates:

Those are the elected officials that get to vote in the convention which will choose the presidential nominee. Generally, they are seen as an obstacle to the prevailing political mood, since these are office holders elected in previous years, and with loyalties to the existing power structure.

As a rule, progressives don't like super delegates.

Unless you are a Hillary supporter. Guess what? Over at Open Left, Chris Bowers has a post, What Is So Undemocratic About Super Delegates?, where he tries to make the case. Excerpt:

... every Super Delegate was elected to his or her position by other Democrats, just as every pledged delegate was also elected by other Democrats. So, why, exactly, are the Super Delegates less democratic than the Pledged Delegates?

Of course, being "democratic" is not the issue. Being a fair representative of Democrats' 2008 presidential preferences is, but Bowers evades that issue. (And by Bower's reasoning, you could have a convention that is 100% super delegates and he wouldn't object.)

And there's more! Bowers links to a post at Hillary-supporting MyDD, titled Superdelegates are people too. Which also argues that they are a good thing.

Here's my point: Ostensible progressives, like the folks at Open Left and MyDD have completely abandoned concerns about fair play. They haven't complained about Hillary's move to get the Michigan delegates seated. They haven't said that Bill's charge that the Nevada caucus rules were "unfair", was a gross exaggeration. And now they are stout defenders of super delegates. You wouldn't have expected that from reading them two years ago, but now they are willing to sacrifice whatever reputation they had for integrity, all to support Hillary.


posted by Quiddity at 1/28/2008 01:41:00 PM