Continuing the expeditions of Jeff MacNelly, James Kilpatrick, and Eugene McCarthy, with apologies.

The Super Delegate

Like a message from prehistory, a multitudinous swarm, or a darkening sky, the general election pestilence of the Super Delegates casts a pall over the hopes of common pols. Thundering home the message of the elders, the SD stifles the cries for reform and change that, in one of nature’s ironies, pop up in sequence with the SD’s quadrennial pre-election appearance. The Super Delegate has extraordinary strength in numbers, as each SD carries a power weighted greater than its pitiful cousin, the lowly, simple Delegate. En masse, the SD population can sap the energy from a primary season and decimate interest in a convention. It can eviscerate expected television ad revenues for convention week, and cause the unemployment of hundreds of advance people. The SD is, as such, widely reviled, and yet, in keeping with the country’s norms, is also left unchecked to continue its plunder of political reason. However, the changing times bring snippets of news from the field: poachers hunting outside of election season, under the radar of parties concerned, may be slowly but inexorably thinning the Super Delegate herd.  Check back in four years.

-Danny Grosso