WSJ: Superdelegates Wait and See: Group Monitors Fallout from Pastor Controversy, Obama's Speech on Race
By JACKIE CALMES
March 20, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Amid all the attention to Barack Obama's race-relations speech this week, one group in particular is monitoring the fallout for the senator from his longtime pastor's inflammatory sermons: the uncommitted superdelegates who could decide the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The Illinois senator has steadily been cutting into Sen. Hillary Clinton's lead among these party leaders, who can vote for any candidate they choose at the August nominating convention. That has added to Sen. Obama's lead among the pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses. Now, Democrats expect Sen. Obama's progress to stall until some fence-sitters see how their constituents react to his attempts to soothe racial tension. In his speech, the senator condemned the minister's views without renouncing him, and, as someone who is biracial, sought to explain the resentments of blacks and whites to the other. Yet after a 15-month campaign that largely transcended race, some Democrats say Sen. Obama's association with the Chicago pastor potentially threatens his bid to be the first African-American president.
Superdelegates are watching to see whether the senator's oratory will assuage white voters outraged at Internet videos showing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. suggesting that America be damned for its treatment of blacks. Separately, many worry that black voters will be outraged by a sense that Sen. Obama is being unfairly judged. "The superdelegates attempt to look at electability, and there is still a lot of water to go over the dam on that subject before most of them have to commit" at the convention, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who is uncommitted, said in an interview yesterday. "Among the rank-and-file, persuadable middle of the road, I think the guy is a problem for Sen. Obama. It kind of reminds people of some of the wars in the past."
More than the average voter, the 795 superdelegates -- Democratic governors, House and Senate members and party officers nationwide -- are sensitive to calculations about a nominee's electability. Their own elections, and those of their party brethren down the ballot, could ride on the coattails of the presidential standard-bearer. Several hundred of these delegates remain uncommitted. But most would prefer Sen. Obama to Sen. Clinton, Democrats widely agree. He has attracted record numbers of new voters -- especially younger ones, African-Americans and independents. Sen. Clinton, they fear, would lose many of those voters and, worse, drive more Republicans to the polls just to vote against her....
Yesterday, in an opinion piece in the New York Times, Gov. Bredesen floated a proposal for the superdelegates to meet in June, after the final nominating contest, to hear from both candidates and commit to one then. Otherwise, he argues, their battle will rage through the summer to the nationally televised convention, and leave the fractured party just two months to unite before November. He says the candidate who looked to have fewer delegates -- combining superdelegates and delegates won in the primaries and caucuses -- would come under pressure to step aside. Gov. Bredesen said Sens. Clinton and Obama have been noncommittal. He says he also spoke with former Vice President Al Gore, another uncommitted superdelegate, and acknowledged that Mr. Gore, among others, pointed out the difficulty of pulling off a June conclave....
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120597148865250353.html
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