Front-runner status in the 2008 primary has become a horrific white elephant, the blood of dead campaigns smeared across its tusks. Rudy Giuliani was a front-runner once. So were Mitt Romney and Sen. Hillary Clinton. And the old white elephant metaphor is even more apt than usual here.
In the 13th century, throughout Southeast Asia’s Thai, Khmer and Malay kingdoms, rare white elephants were seen as a great blessing, but because the sacred animals could do no work, their owners simply had to feed and feed the beasts, with no return on their investment. Kings bestowed the giants on wealthy rivals, and the up-and-comers couldn’t say no to the magnanimous gift, though the gesture doomed them to spending all their fortunes shoving grain into the pachyderm’s gaping maw. A white elephant, then, has come to mean any perceived benefit that is, in reality, a curse. And given the political nature of the saying’s supposed origin, what better way to characterize the dreaded front-runner status?
Last week, former President Bill Clinton claimed his wife has been the underdog since she came in third place in Iowa. At the same time, Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, claimed the only way Hillary Clinton could overcome Obama’s lead in pledged delegates after the man’s gorgeous string of victories throughout February would be if she won the rest of the contests by 25 to 30 points. Fearing the jinx, the campaign has released all statements since then through political consultant David Axelrod, who was largely responsible for the online-media blitz that gave birth to the Illinois senator’s candidacy. Plouffe has not been heard from in days. His family begins to grow worried.Front-runner status isn’t merely a white elephant, fuck no. It is the kiss of sweet death. And yet … and yet …
Plouffe has a point. The only way Clinton can come back is by overtaking Obama in superdelegates if neither side has the requisite 2,025 total delegates by the convention in August. If she wins in Texas and Ohio March 4, that’s a very real possibility. There are only two contests between March 4 and the next big deal, Pennsylvania, on April 22, in which, like Texas and Ohio, Clinton is still ahead in the polls (CHECK MONDAY FOR LATEST RASMUSSEN, QUINNIPIAC, poll totals at Realclearpolitics.com). Of those two primaries, Obama has a sure-thing win in Mississippi, but the closed primary in Wyoming could go Clinton. And after Pennsylvania, the combination of closed and open primaries seems as if it could keep this thing close.
So what if Clinton remains just behind Obama in pledged delegates? Just who are these superdelegates, anyway? Well, there are 3,253 pledged delegates, who must vote for the candidate who wins in their congressional district, state or other proportional divide, the likes of which vary from state to state and are based on a byzantine set of bylaws. Then, there are 796 superdelegates who can vote for whichever Democratic candidate they want. These superdelegates include all the party’s governors, U.S. senators and representatives; all the members of the Democratic National Committee; and a handful of party elder statesmen such as retired House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt.
After the longhaired-hippie contingent of American Democratic voters demanded a Eugene McCarthy presidential bid at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the party went about its usual means of selection — wheeling and dealing in smoke-filled backrooms — and turned out lame party hack Hubert Humphrey. Outside, as Abbie Hoffman and other bomb-throwing leftists demanded the party nominate a live pig named Pigasus instead, riots broke out and things got breathtakingly ugly as the city’s Democratic mayor unleashed an army of police to indiscriminately beat the snot out of a large portion of the activist Democratic base. By 1972, the party had relented and allowed the people to decide the nominee. They gave us George McGovern, who got trounced by Richard Nixon, and then in 1976, a freaking peanut farmer from Georgia, who won a post-Watergate election that could have been won by a ham sandwich made from the aforementioned Pigasus, as long as it ran on the Democratic ticket. By 1980, the party came up with the superdelegate system we know today, to make sure the people would never again nominate a total loser.
So when you hear people on the news-talk shows say the superdelegates will never screw over the candidate with the most pledged delegates, don’t believe it. Screwing over the will of the people is the superdelegates’ raison d’être. But they will do so only if the leading candidate looks like a sure-fire loser who can attract the party base but will get killed in the general election. So far, Barack Obama looks like anything but that.
Send hate mail to Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com.
