It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No — it’s a superdelegate! Yes, heroes live among us. They can hire people to leap tall buildings, blow smoke and destroy democracy in a single bound!
One of my favorite books is Animal Farm by George Orwell — mostly because it’s short. There are many great books thousands of pages long, but few speak so clearly and succinctly in a little more than 100 pages. It also helps that I have the attention span of a 5-year-old who has just discovered a bouncy ball.
In Animal Farm, the animals take over the land and build a society based on laws. One of these is that “all animals are equal” — a decree on which any great democracy is based. The book ends, as most democracies do, with a subtle change: “All animals are equal — but some are more equal than others.”
Our first experience with this was eight years ago. Dubya was campaigning for president against Al Gore, who at the time was as animated as a piece of Sheetrock. Yes, Gore needed a fresh coat of paint, but his beliefs, his morals and his ability to speak coherently stood firm against the future president.
That November, we all learned the definition of the Electoral College. Even though more people might vote for a candidate, it doesn’t matter in this democracy. Although more than half a million more people voted for Gore, Bush won the medieval electoral vote 271 to 266.
I didn’t get it. I still don’t get it. It disregards whole regions, creates swing states that are lavished with gifts and drives liberals living in states shaped like an “L” to drink. The Electoral College turns voters into ghosts — and digs up a few graves where votes matter more.
Now, we are faced with the aforementioned “superdelegate.” The superdelegate is a creature that bleeds like us, dreams like us, but has 10,000 times the strength of any of us. The superdelegate is a member of Congress, a governor, a party official and/or a grassroots activist.
There are a total of 796 superdelegates — each an individual human being. In contrast, the entire state of Utah gets 36.
For example, former President Clinton is a superdelegate. There is a good chance he will send his 10,000 votes toward the candidate he has slept with at least one time.
Rules are rules. Although Barack Obama builds momentum in the race, Hillary Clinton might have started a mile ahead of him. Of the 796 superdelegates, 300 have committed to a candidate, and Clinton leads Obama by about 2-to-1. It is such a wide margin that her campaign stated before Super Tuesday that, even if Obama pulls ahead (which he did) and even if he continues to win (which he has), Clinton will still have an edge in overall delegates.
There’s a word for this. It isn’t democracy. It’s monarchy. Seven hundred ninety-six democrats have declared themselves kings and queens of the liberal world.
It gets better. Many journalists were baffled by this revelation, so the Democratic National Convention held a teleconference to sit them on their laps and explain the whole story. During this teleconference, they revealed that 76 delegates have not even been chosen yet.
What?
It’s true. While America is distracted, the DNC will “eeny-meeny-miney-moe” for the future of the free world. If months down the road a more popular Obama loses the nomination over the will of a few, there will be hard questions from the rest of us left in the barn.
The pigs might be walking on two feet, dear readers, but right now it’s the donkeys I’m really worried about.
