Capital Gains and Games

If Clinton believes, as she must, that she has no realistic chance of winning more PLEDGED delegates than Obama, she should not continue to seek the nomination.

She and her supporters argue that the superdelegates exist to exercise independent judgment, rather than just to rubber stamp whoever leads in pledged delegates, but that view is misleading and mostly invalid with regard to this year's nomination.

Based on the history of their creation, the superdelegates were created for two reasons: (1) to put a candidate with more pledged delegates and/or a high degree of likelihood of finishing with the most pledged delegates over the top (or the prohibitive favorite) to avoid a long, drawn-out, divisive and damaging continuation of the primary fight (i.e., to avoid another Ted Kennedy in 1980, as they did by nixing Gary Hart in 1984), and (2) to overturn the pledged delegate leader in exceptional circumstances if he is clearly highly unelectable (e.g., McGovern) and/or way out of the mainstream of the party (assuming those who voted in primaries & caucuses were not representative of party members as a whole).

Neither of the above conditions apply today (at least not in Hillary's favor*), so it would not be legitimate for the superdelegates to overturn Obama's pledged delegate lead and give the nomination to Hillary. Doing so would be wrong as a matter of principle, in addition to being disastrous for the party, causing it to lose support from many African-Americans and young voters, many of whom would sit out this general election and probably a couple more.

* We are, however, at the point at which it is at least arguable that condition #1 applies in OBAMA's favor, and that the superdelegates should put him over the top now.