Throughout this entire campaign Obama has unabashedly sought to use the caucus system to his advantage. Despite the stark differences between the results of caucuses and one-person one-vote primaries Obama seems to have every intention of using these antidemocratic means to secure the nomination. Not only do caucuses place unfair peer pressure on those who might be not want to be seen as voting against hope they obviously disenfranchise those who don’t have the time to spend hours in a caucus as well as those too apathetic or sleep-deprived to attend. Don’t our democratic values require that Obama repudiate these votes and agree to rerun the contests in these states using primaries?

NO! That would be fucking stupid. Just as stupid as the recent petition from MoveOn.org to “let the voters decide” or any of the huge number of blogs whining about antidemocratic super delegates. All of the bizarre rules about how the democratic party chooses it’s nominee affect who is chosen. If caucuses had been banned it’s reasonable to think Obama might have quickly been dismissed as unelectable. Hell, even if you decide to count caucuses it’s not clear it’s fair to say that Obama is ahead in the popular vote. After all the citizens of two entire states were disenfranchised by the actions of a few of their state officials. Even if you agree (as do I) that the national party is reasonably deterring rule breaking that doesn’t mean excluding the millions of innocent residents in those states isn’t antidemocratic¹. Hell, if you believe superdelegates are antidemocratic then you should think the entire primary process in which national party officials reserve early voting for certain states is inherently antidemocratic and it seems clear that placing Iowa first while obscuring the results from large coastal states like New York and California in the mass of results from Super Tuesday was a substantial and likely decisive factor in Obama’s lead.

But we don’t even need to go there to see this antidemocratic argument is total bunk. The entire idea that somehow any deviation from the popular will (even in a private political organization) is somehow antidemocratic (in a bad sense) is simply absurd. I mean is the supreme court antidemocratic? It overturns majoritarian demands based on pre-written rules. Should Senators refuse to filibuster horrific bills so long as 51% of the population (or 51% of representatives) favor it? Hell, the very idea of the constitution is a set of rules that override majoritarian sentiments. Is it antidemocratic²? In a certain technical sense these things are probably ‘antidemocratic’ in that they circumscribe majoritarian power but they are not antidemocratic in the sense of being antithetical to the ideals of a free republic as the word is used in common discourse. Thus it’s simply not true that Clinton’s superdelegate strategy is antidemocratic (in a bad sense).

If you still aren’t convinced ask yourself if you think the parliamentary system used throughout most of Europe is antidemocratic. After all the parliamentary system chooses the prime minister without any direct input from the voters. Sure you might point out that most canidates are committed to a particular party and thus, just like the US electoral college, the voters in effect pick who will be the next prime minister; but this overlooks what happens when no party controls more than half the seats. Just as in the democratic primary when parliament is too closely divided for any one party to claim a majority the MPs get together and decide who they will elect as prime minister based on coalitions and bargains without any voter input at all. Surely if it isn’t antidemocratic to totally leave the decision in the hands of our duly selected representatives then it can’t be antidemocratic to select a canidate based on the popular vote as well as the judgement of the superdelegates that we selected.

Ultimately there just isn’t a serious argument that Clinton is doing anything different than Obama in using the existing rules of the democratic party to maximum effect in pursuing the nomination. Obama isn’t going to renounce caucuses even though they skew the vote in his direction nor is Clinton going to renounce superdelegates. Now there may be reasonable arguments that the superdelegate system is bad but the mere fact that it can reverse the delegate count doesn’t make it any more suspect than our constitution or supreme court. Realistically, I think what is going on here is that most Obama supporters (like almost everyone) were pretty ignorant about the nature of the democratic nomination process and just assumed that it was a simple majoritarianish election. Thus when they felt they’d won that majoritarian election it felt deeply unfair that their ‘win’ might be undermined by these superdelegates though of course in actuality they had never won and it was never a simple majoritarian contest. Besides, nomination decisions aren’t about being fair at all; they are about maximizing the chances that reasonable views will prevail for the nation.

That is why, despite the fact that it’s perfectly reasonable for her to win using superdelegates, Clinton should drop out of the race now. I voted for her in the California primary because I thought she was a more reliable choice to run the country but for the good of both the party and the country she should give it up now. Like it or not people perceive the superdelegates to be some kind of sketchy cabal overturning the will of the people rather than the way they see senators or MPs. By extending the campaign Clinton will only tarnish the appeal of both her an Obama and if she wins after this she will immediately alienate a large section of the party. I mean can you imagine how many people would be disenchanted with the party if the first credible black canidate won the national party vote only to be passed over because of opaque party machinations of (mostly white?) insiders? It’s totally unfair but as I said the nomination is not about being fair to the canidates but about picking someone a good canidate who is likely to win. Besides, after she started whining about always being asked questions first I began to have serious doubts about her electability. Doesn’t matter if she is right you can’t whine while running for president (and yes it would be just as bad if not worse if she was a man).