Over on Abc News today, there is an article titled Why Can't Barak Obama Close the Deal? . They point to the following:
The Illinois senator's had persistent problems in winning working-class, less-educated whites and Pennsylvania accentuated his seeming inability to connect with those voters.
We Democrats venerate the working-class, less-educated white voters. We think of them as the salt of the earth. But back in the 80s, we had a more concise name for this constituency. We called them Reagan Democrats. In other words, nominal Democrats who vote Republican. These are Democrats least committed to the ideals of the Democratic Party. These are the Democrats who voted for George Bush because they thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq as payback for 9/11. Obama can't close the deal because Hillary has a lock on the Republican wing of the Democratic party.
The reason for super delegates is not actually to ensure that the party nominates a winner. It is to ensure that the party nominates a candidate who genuinely espouses the ideals of the Party. It is of course, a fundamentally counter-democratic mechanism (small 'd' here, as in counter to democracy, not the Democratic Party). It is a recognition that in a pure democratic process, precisely this wing of nominal democratic voters could conceivably vote to nominate a candidate who is only a nominal Democrat, but represents an ideology counter to the Democratic party. In short, it's the super delegates job to keep the Reagan Democrats from nominating a Republican as the Democratic candidate.
Now, I'm not saying that HIllary is some sort of crypto Republican. But why are we concerned that Barak Obama is less appealing to the least committed members of the Democratic party? Why aren't we more concerned that Hillary Clinton's only case for viability is that she has a lock on the voters who share the least of the Democratic Party's core values?
Let's put it another way. Do you think these working-class, less educated white voters, nominally Democrats, really like Hillary? Do they see her as the stronger of two strong candidates, or as the lesser of two evils? I suspect the latter. Barak Obama represents our Party's ideals, while HIllary's claim to legitimacy is that she is the stronger candidate, because she consistently wins the votes of Democrats who don't share those ideals.
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