The Real Superdelegates

by digby

Greg Sargent comments on Dowd’s latest atrocity:

I wanted to flag a line in the column that perfectly encapsulates top-shelf pundit elitism at its finest. Referring to Hillary’s new strategy of bashing the press coverage, Dowd writes:

Beating on the press is the lamest thing you can do. It is only because of the utter open-mindedness of the press that Hillary can lose 11 contests in a row and still be treated as a contender.

Right, so according to Dowd, the only reason we’re still conducting this presidential race is because she and her fellow media cohorts are benevolently holding off on crowning Obama the winner. That’s just so lovely and generous of them, isn’t it?

Yes. It’s very kind of our press to allow Clinton to stay in the race when the pledged delegate count is currently Obama 1193 and Clinton 1038. It’s clearly a rout.

The truth is that the race, at this moment, is still close, as you can see from those numbers. In fact, judging by those numbers alone, you would have to say that the Democratic Party is seriously divided. However, we also know that Obama has won all the recent contests and that momentum is on his side and that unless something unexpected happens he is very likely to win.

But we have a little mechanism here in the United States designed to clear this up once and for all, and it isn’t begging for the press for guidance about who we are allowed to vote for. It’s called an election and as Sargent points out in his post, we’re going to have a couple of them next Tuesday which may be decisive. (On the other hand, in the unlikely event that Clinton does stop this momentum, then perhaps it will take a few more to decide.) If people object to superdelegates deciding who our nominees should be I would certainly think they’d object to Maureen Dowd and the kewl kids, of all people, doing it. Do they really have our best interests at heart?

As an aside, is it just me or has Dowd’s preening self-regard recently made a shift into Norma Desmond territory?

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