Fuzzy Super Delegate Math

How can the candidate, who has had a huge percentage of voters choose someone else in four primary contests, hold a commanding delegate lead? On Saturday evening Barack Obama won a landslide 2:1 victory over Hillary Clinton in South Carolina. The delegates as awarded by the proportional popular vote count in that state were:

Obama 25 delegates
Clinton 12
Edwards 8

So the people have now spoken thus far in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina and their math is:

Obama 36 (going in) + 25 (from Saturday) = 61 total delegates
Clinton 38 + 12 = 40
Edwards 18 + 8 = 26

Alas objects in your mirror are closer than they appear...

The delegate total pledged thus far including "super" delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention is:

Hillary Clinton with 224 delegates
Barack Obama with 148
John Edwards with 54

How can this be?

Because after 1972 very liberal George McGovern's thrashing by Richard Nixon, party insiders (who felt it was important until that moment that your vote be heard vs. handing the nomination to someone in a smoke filled room) decided that no, wait, you are neither smart nor mature enough to be trusted to select the right candidate with your own vote.

Therefore, your vote is now subject to this super delegate "safety valve" and only counts as 3/5ths of a vote whilst Democratic Party leaders and insiders control 42% or between 796-852 (depending on your math skills) of all convention delegates votes.

This is why Hillary can get away with a 1-line congratulatory blow-off of Obama's historic win while already in Nashville Saturday night and go right into her stump speech. She knows those super delegates are indebted to 8-years of her husband's rule and are beholden to no one but them. So super delegates can vote for whomever they wish without concern for the voice of the voters in their state.

Super delegates never used to matter because the nominee was known by or before Super Tuesday. Well in SC 3 of 4 voters, and almost 500,000 of them showed up blowing the old turnout mark of 300k completely out of the water, voted against candidate Clinton. Indeed in every state contested thus far between 60 and 73% of the vote has gone to someone other than Hillary.

If you try to make it a race thing, yes, Obama won 80% of the black vote and... 25% of the white vote. He also won 66% of the youth vote of all colours. History has shown that those new voters will disappear just as they did when their darling Howard Dean was sent packing by "the scream" and these super-delegate numbers. They will simply not show up in November if the status quo is the choice (Clinton v McCain, thereby handing the presidency to the Republicans again...).

Keith Olberham on MSNBC the other evening speaks about super delegates....

Using Super delegate crony insider fuzzy math these are the current committed delegate totals*
Clinton 184
Obama 87
Edwards 28

Super delegates are becoming the dirty little secret of this year's race and finally the mainstream media is beginning to awaken to something other than Britney Spears showing up at her kid's school.

Now is the time to express outrage and demand that super delegates from each state follow the voice of the electorate in that state vs. politics.

*Estimates from other news sources show Mrs. Clinton as high as 207 and as low as 184.

(As appeared on TBD.com)