SUPER DELEGATES and the Cartoon

ON February 11th... I posted a cartoon from the LA TIMES. The cartoonist obviously feels that Hillary is a bigger target than Barack but I'm not sure about that....because within the realm of reality, that seems to exist in America, I think the cartoonist is totally underestimating RACISM as an issue.

I understand if someone doesn't possess racial bias that's it's easy to assume the PROBLEM has diminished in 21st century America.

I'm wondering if that form of assumption is on point.

My reasoning behind this is that I have heard the "N" word more in the last month than I had heard it in the last five years. Usually coming from the mouth of an Anglo joke teller....but a rose is a rose is a rose and if it smells like a rose it probably is a rose....and the smell of racial improprieties has a distinct odor no matter how deep it might be buried within the human psyche.

I'm slightly concerned that Barack's target might be considerably larger than Hillary's and larger in ways that cannot be measured because denial is a strong proponent of racial prejudice.

BUT bigger than the issue of who has a bigger target to shoot at.....is the issue of

SUPER DELEGATES

No sooner do I finally accept the Electoral College... than I'm confronted with Super Delegates.....which seem to have just appeared on the political scene.

Read the following article
By Matthew Mosk and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, February 10, 2008; Page A01

For months, Patsy Arceneaux sat on the fence as key aides to the presidential campaigns of Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama made gentle but persistent inquiries. Ann Lewis, a close Clinton adviser, called weekly. The 2004 Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), called, urging her to jump behind Obama.
This Story
· THE SUPERDELEGATES: 796 Insiders May Hold Democrats' Key
· Presidential Candidates Boost Campaign Efforts
· Full List of Super Delegates
They all wanted to know the same thing: how she planned to vote in her role as a superdelegate at this summer's national convention.
Last week, the Baton Rouge party loyalist, one of 796 Democratic insiders who may well determine the eventual nominee, got the call that finally persuaded her -- from former president Bill Clinton, the man who 10 years earlier gave her husband a job.
"When the president called, I said to him, 'I guess I've moved to the top of the food chain,' " Arceneaux laughed. "He was very persuasive."
The calls were just one aspect of the aggressive campaign underway to win what could be the most important and least understood contest in the race for the Democratic nomination. As a group, the "superdelegates," a category created by party leaders in 1982 to give elected officials more clout in the nominating process, constitute a prize worth twice as much as the state of California.
[View a full list of Democratic super delegates (PDF)]
Though Clinton and Obama have pursued the support of superdelegates for a year, the courtships have intensified in recent weeks as it has become clear that the two are locked in a virtual dead heat for delegate support. Party insiders say this could be the first campaign in more than two decades that reaches the national convention in August without a clear nominee, making the votes of superdelegates -- a group made up of current and former top elected officials and Democratic National Committee (DNC) members from around the nation -- potentially decisive.
"Right now, everyone is busting their chops to try to get the remaining superdelegates to commit. And they're having a real hard time of it," said Mike Berman, a Clinton supporter who worked on Walter F. Mondale's 1984 campaign, the last one in which superdelegates were a factor.
So far, 213 superdelegates have publicly committed to backing Clinton and 139 have pledged their support to Obama, according to a survey by the Associated Press.
The potential for superdelegates to play a critical role has some party leaders worried that the situation could lend the appearance that the nominee will be selected by insiders rather than by rank-and-file voters.

THIS MORNING I READ THAT THE SUPER DELEGATES WERE RECEIVING MONEY FROM BOTH CANDIDATES....MONEY TO HELP WITH THEIR PERSONAL ELECTION CONFERS.

IF THAT IS TRUE THEN THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WILL BE DETERMINED BY 796 PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN BOUGHT AND PAID FOR.

$UPER DELEGATES
WOULD BE A BETTER SPELLING.

Michael Timothy McAlevey