Bent Corner

Democratic superdelegates are delegates that are not bound to the will of the voters. They fall outside the primary election and caucus system. For 2008, the Democrats will have 796 of these superdelegates attending the 2008 Democratic Convention. They will be casting votes along with the 4,049 regular non-super delegates. The superdelegates are not beholding to anyone. They can cast their vote as they please.

Who are these superdelegates?

• Former Democratic presidents
• Former Democratic vice-presidents
• Democratic governors
• Democratic senators and congressmen
• Democratic Committee muckety mucks

Out of all the groups that make up the superdelegates, it’s the later that bothers me the most. Who are these people?

Some of these superdelegates have already committed their votes to a candidate. For instance, even though nobody here in Maryland has yet to cast a single vote, Governor Martin O’Malley has already made a commitment to cast his superdelegate vote for Hillary Clinton. The same with Sen. Barbara Mikulski. She too has agreed to vote for Clinton.

This doesn’t mean that O’Malley, Mikulski, or any of the other committed superdelegates cannot change their mind. Superdelegates might be super, but they don’t have to keep their word.

What does all this mean? It means that Clinton or Obama could get the most votes going into the convention and still not get the nomination. A candidate coming into the 2008 Democratic convention with fewer regular delegates could make up for their shortage by locking in some of the 796 superdelegate votes.

There is nothing democratic about Democratic superdelegates. It’s about as undemocratic as you can get.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The Honorable Barbara A. Mikulski
Suite 503
Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-4654

Dear Senator Barbara Mikulski:

This concerns the recent email you sent me asking me to shut off my electrical power this past Saturday for one hour. I didn’t see the message until today when I decided to clean out my spam folder. You claimed in your email that by turning off my electricity for one whole hour, I would be fighting global warming.

I have to ask you Senator Mikulski - do you know how hot it is in central Maryland this time of year? Telling someone in Hagerstown to turn off their electricity on a humid 91-degree day is just down right silly. Especially when you realize the air-conditioning will only have to work just that much harder after it is turned back on. You actually conserve more power Senator Mikulski by setting the thermostat to one temperature and leaving it alone.

I couldn’t help but notice you were not in Maryland this past weekend. No, you were on a taxpayer-funded trip to Greenland. It was reported that your trip even included a boat tour of Disko Bay where you witnessed first hand the effects of climate change. You actually got to see ice breaking off glaciers and sliding into the water. That sounds like a nice weekend.

Did they serve snacks on the boat ride?

It’s a shame you couldn’t just do what I normally do when I want to learn about something. Instead of going to Greenland for the weekend to watch big chunks of ice fall into the water, I would just go to Wikipedia and read about it. After reading about climate change over at Wikipedia, I would have then gone over to YouTube and watched videos of the icebergs of Disko Bay. Using the Internet to learn about global warming may not be as exciting as jetting off to Greenland for the weekend, but you have to admit my learn-about-it-on-the-Internet method creates a much smaller carbon footprint then yours.

Using the Internet to learn about things is also much cheaper then your method. Granted, you and I both pay the same amount with our methods - absolutely nothing. Even though you personally didn’t pay for the weekend junket to Greenland, the taxpayers did.

The very same people you told to turn off their air-conditioning on a 91-degree day.

Please do us a favor Senator Mikulski and the next time you decide to take a costly fact-finding trip on the tax-payers dime, stop and ask yourself if you could learn just as much by getting on the Internet.

Democratically Yours,

Rick Rottman

Hagerstown, Maryland