Ezra Klein argues that the only way for Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination is to convince the superdelegates that Barack Obama would be a disaster in the general election:
To convince them to do so, she'll need to fatally wound Obama. But attacking that ferociously will destroy her candidacy, too, and infuriate superdelegates who see her irreversibly bloodying the Democrats' likely nominee, and thus hurting the party's chances for victory. What she really needs is for Obama to independently collapse, so the superdelegates have a reason to turn on him. But that's exceedingly unlikely. The only close contender for unsettling the superdelegates is if Obama, rather than collapsing, proves himself passive and vulnerable before Clinton's continuing assault, and thus suggests that he'll be shredded by the Republicans' fusillade. Democrats, after years of cowering before the right wing's attacks, will not send a political pacifist into the general election.
Meanwhile, Harold Meyerson points out that the superdelegates are ultimately prisoners of predictable demographic voting patterns:
It would be nice if one of them did break through to the other side, did start winning voters out of the other candidate's base. That would give superdelegates some tangible achievement on which they could base their vote. Because if Florida (retirees) and Michigan (white working class) have primaries rescheduled for June, and Clinton wins them both by dint of demographics, then it's possible the delegate and popular vote counts may be nearly even at the close of primary season. Which would put the superdelegates in a justifiable dither: If the primary contest is done and it comes out even, and if the dividing lines in the party aren't those of policy but those of identity -- what, dear God, is a superdelegate to do then? And how should the supes calculate the candidates' respective strengths against John McCain?
--The Editors
