{"id":2287,"date":"2008-02-28T12:34:45","date_gmt":"2008-02-28T17:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2008\/02\/superdelegate_s\/"},"modified":"2008-02-28T12:34:45","modified_gmt":"2008-02-28T17:34:45","slug":"superdelegate_s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2008\/02\/superdelegate_s\/","title":{"rendered":"Super-Delegate Switcheroo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve seen a few reports of Democratic super-delegates switching sides&#8211;the most recent being of <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2008\/02\/john_lewis_officially_switches.php\">Rep. John Lewis<\/a>.  This strikes me as odd on two levels.<br \/>\nFirst, I&#8217;m not clear why all these people felt compelled to announce their allegiance in the first place.  As super-delegates, their role is to settle a party nomination fight at the convention.  In a sense they are referees charged with helping the party pick the &#8220;best&#8221; nominee.  It seems to me they partially undermine their ability to objectively do this when they endorse a candidate early in the campaign.<br \/>\nBut if you are going to side with a candidate&#8211;one with a viable shot to win the nomination&#8211;stick with that candidate.  I&#8217;m scratching my head at these delegates currently switching from Clinton to Obama.  What has fundamentally changed about either of these candidates since November?  Nothing really, other than Obama becoming more popular.<br \/>\nSome people have rationalized such a switch on the grounds that the super-delegate should conform to the electoral wishes of his or her district.  If that&#8217;s the case, then the super-delegate should have waited until after the local primary to announce his or her support.<br \/>\nWhen I see a public official who early on hopped aboard front-runner Clinton&#8217;s campaign, but is now switching to Obama, I can&#8217;t help but think we have a band wagon jumper in action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2008\/02\/superdelegate_s\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Super-Delegate Switcheroo\"><p>I&#8217;ve seen a few reports of Democratic super-delegates switching sides&#8211;the most recent being of Rep. John Lewis. This strikes me as odd on two levels. First, I&#8217;m not clear why all these people felt compelled to announce their allegiance in the first place. As super-delegates, their role is to settle a party nomination fight at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}