Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has cited party rules in calling the super delegates “free agents” with respect to their pledge to either Barak Obama of Hillary Clinton. This is ironic, given the assertions by Dean that this primary will “be over by July 1″ and calls by Nancy Pelosi for the supers to pledge already - pushing the supers to pledge whether they are prepared to or not.
More recently, both Dean and Pelosi have backed away from their “hard line” stances, as the specter of campaign lawsuits loom on the horizon.Dean is now citing party rules reflecting the independence of the supers and Pelosi is backing away from her support of the Obama campaign’s June 3 line in the sand.
Watching the Democratic Party repeatedly bungle their own process should be a clear signal to Americans. What you have seen is the party leadership ride roughshod on the Florida and Michigan delegation, rather than work with them. When the threats didn’t produce the desired results, the Democratic Party asserted itself in a way which disenfranchised their constituents in both states. Then, in the resulting mess, the DNC again attempted to force a conclusion and is now responding to pushback from the supers and the campaigns of their own candidates by declaring how much they respect the rules.
These are the same polarizing, obstructionist tactics they have been using in congress when they were in the minority and which have prevented them from accomplishing anything in congress as the majority.
The Democratic Party has been unable to coalesce behind a single candidate and now it is going to the supers. The super delegates are in a bind themselves. They would much rather have a clear popular candidate they could throw their weight behind. As it stands, the super delegates are going to have to reject either the first woman president or the first black president. This does not bode well for the party in any case, as they have sold themselves as being the party of race and gender.
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