Super delegates key in Dem race

Ohio and Pennsylvania will be important players.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Neither Hillary Rodham Clinton nor Barack Obama is going to win the Democratic presidential nomination based on the primaries alone.

At this point, it’s just about mathematically impossible. That’s the central reality of the race now that Super Tuesday has come and gone.

The contests yet to come — including Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia on Tuesday; Texas and Ohio March 4, and Pennsylvania on April 22 — remain tremendously important.

But the object of the game has changed: Now the idea behind winning primaries is to gain momentum and thereby impress the 796 super delegates, most of them party and elected officials.

Clinton aides say they’ll play by the rules they’ve been handed. But Obama has been sounding the alarm, saying that he should be the nominee if he wins more pledged delegates.

“It would be problematic,” Obama said Friday, “for the political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters.”

Those insiders, the super delegates, aren’t bound by the results in their states, and many of them have been choosing sides already. But they’re also free to change their minds later on.

What confronts the Democrats now is a classic case of the law of unintended consequences.

“They’re being bitten by a process they created to solve a problem they don’t have,” said Donald F. Kettl, director of the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.

The super delegates, who comprise 20 percent of the 4,049 delegates, exist to prevent the party from nominating an unelectable outsider — not to stop it from choosing between two strong, mainstream candidates.

To be sure, there are enough pledged delegates left in the coming primaries and caucuses to get either Clinton or Obama over the top without the super delegates. But for that happen, given the Democrat’s proportional system, one candidate would have to start winning everywhere by huge margins.

According to the Associated Press count, which is unofficial, Clinton has the lead in total delegates, 1,045 to 960 with 2,025 needed for victory.

Obama is ahead by 25 or so in pledged delegates, those chosen by the voters. But Clinton has a lead of slightly more than 100 in super delegates, giving her the overall advantage.

About 40 percent of all the super delegates nationwide have endorsed a candidate thus far.

All 398 members of the Democratic National Committee are super delegates. So, too, is every Democrat in the House and Senate, as well as every Democratic governor.

The best path to a happy ending for the Democrats would be for either Clinton or Obama to sweep Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania and build up a clear lead.