by Bruno Somerset

Created on: March 04, 2008   Last Updated: March 19, 2008

As Obama and Clinton have battled each other across the country over every available delegate, neither has been able to deliver a knockout blow. The outcome in Texas and Ohio only served to muddy the waters even further, when everyone thought that would happen on Super Tuesday. Since none of the Democratic contests are winner-take-all, it appears that Clinton and Obama will continue to split delegates all the way to the convention.

Until very recently no one had ever heard the term "super delegate." Today, people are talking about super delegates more than we talk about the latest hit movie or the previous night's NBA scores. There has been record voter turnout in the 2008 Democratic primaries and caucuses as people express both their displeasure with George W. Bush and their support of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and most have believed that their votes would decide the Democratic nominee. That will not be the case after all; the decision will rest with the super delegates.

Exactly who are these super delegates? They are the supreme party insiders: Democratic members of Congress, governors, and high-ranking party members. One super delegate who will certainly vote for Hillary Clinton: Bill Clinton. At this point, Hillary Clinton still has the greatest number of super delegates committed to her, but as this is not binding it could change overnight. The whole super delegate idea was conceived in the first place to allow party leaders to block candidates they weren't particularly happy with from getting the nomination; not surprisingly, it all started with their uneasiness with Jimmy Carter.

This year will mark the return of good old-fashioned back room politics to the Democratic Party. It won't be smoked-filled rooms as it was in the days of Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson, but the result will be the same. This time it will be the super delegates who will swing the balance of power either to Obama or Clinton, depending upon whom they think has the best chance of winning. It is possible that after 50 primaries and caucuses, the nominee will be decided by the roughly 800 super delegates who are not bound by the primaries and can vote for whoever they choose.

So while the country may be ready for an African-American President, the Democratic super delegates may not, and could block it by shifting their support to Clinton. They could also switch their support to Obama, even if Clinton was leading in actual delegates won in primaries, if they thought he had a better chance of beating John McCain. So for the Democrats at least, Super Tuesday was nowhere near the end of the line for either Clinton or Obama. For all the talk of change, they still have to deal with Democratic Party politics as usual.

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