Superdelegate Seeks Voting Advice on YouTube
Lauren Wolfe, the president of College Democrats of America, posted a video on YouTube asking people what they think about the presidential campaign. Wolfe, who is also a superdelegate, tells Melissa Block she's getting a ton of feedback that will help her represent young people when she decides how to vote.
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MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Now, to the ongoing Democratic presidential race. With nine primaries to go, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton are still competing for the support of voters and superdelegates. There are still over 200 superdelegates who haven't yet committed to a candidate, and two of them are Lauren Wolfe and Awais Khaleel, president and vice president of the College Democrats of America.
To help them choose, this week, Lauren and Awais posted a video on YouTube asking people to share their opinion.
(Soundbite of video clip from YouTube)
Mr. AWAIS KHALEEL (Vice President, College Democrats of America): We really want to hear from you.
Ms. LAUREN WOLFE (President, College Democrats of America): So let us know who you think has the best plan.
Mr. KHALEEL: Friend us on Facebook or MySpace.
Ms. WOLFE: Send us a YouTube video.
Mr. KHALEEL: Or you could just let us know the old fashion way - through e-mail.
BLOCK: And we're joined now from Detroit by Lauren Wolfe. She's a law student at the University of Detroit Mercy.
Lauren, welcome to the program.
Ms. WOLFE: Hi. It's great to be here.
BLOCK: What was the inspiration behind this YouTube video? What's the idea?
Ms. WOLFE: Well, we really wanted to reach out to young people and hear what they had to say before we, you know, weighed in on the process. And I think that this is a way to reach out nationally to young people in a way that they can easily access, and then easily give us commentary back.
BLOCK: Well, how definitive will this be for you? In other words, at some point, you might want to make up your own mind about who you would pick to be the next president of the United States?
Ms. WOLFE: I don't really think it matters on what I personally think, because I'm the president of the College Democrats of America. It's my job to represent young people. We've always historically stayed out of the nomination process because the organization represents all college students working on all sorts of campaigns. So, we support everyone working for every candidate for the Democratic nomination.
That's our - been our historical platform and we actually have a neutrality statement that went into effect very early of 2007. But at this point, we've received a lot of feedback from students across the country saying, you represent me on the DNC, I want you to do this or I want you to take this stand. And so it's important for us at this point, I think, to weigh in on what young people feel.
BLOCK: I wonder if there's one message that has struck you, that really jumped out from the pile that you've received, in terms of how young people are feeling about this election.
Ms. WOLFE: What I think is interesting is kind of how different people have been tying this in or trying to, you know, make their statement stand out from others. And how we, as young people, might think what represents the youth vote might be different than other demographics and how you show support in those. For example, Ezra Dorch Feldman(ph) writes to me from the University of Chicago. He sent me an e-mail, and he said: Every night when there is a primary or a caucus, you hear that Obama's vote total jumps up when a college town results come in. His Facebook groups and YouTube groups are by far the largest of any candidate.
But then other people write in, like Amanda Coffi(ph) writes from Berkeley. She wrote me on my Facebook wall and she said that Hillary won the youth vote in California, and she will take it in the general.
BLOCK: How long is it taking you to sort through all these messages?
Ms. WOLFE: Well, I finished my last final yesterday. When I got home I started, but I had over a 1,000 e-mail messages at that point. So, we're trying to respond to every single message. We've been responding to all the Facebook messages as well, but actually on Facebook, you can't even respond to as many messages as we've been receiving because it's kind of tracked as spam. So, we have to wait 24 hours to respond now.
BLOCK: Well, Lauren Wolfe, president of the College Democrats of America, a law student and undecided superdelegate. Thanks so much for talking with us.
Ms. WOLFE: Thank you.
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Superdelegates Primer: What You Need to Know
Listen to superdelegates across the country describe which candidate they are supporting — or why they are uncommitted.
Want to Know More?
In a new series, "The Backroom Primary," NPR takes an in-depth look at superdelegates and the role they will play (and are playing). The series, which will appear on many NPR programs, will include mini-profiles of superdelegates; conversations with superdelegates who are bucking the will of the people in their districts; and the prospect, first raised by Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, of a "superdelegate primary" in June, after all the other primaries and caucuses have taken place.
With no primaries since early March and none to come before Pennsylvania on April 22, the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination would seem to be in a weird holding pattern. Yet the delegate count continues to change nearly each day. (As of this writing, according to the Associated Press, Illinois Barack Obama has 1,632 delegates, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, 1,500.)
How, one might ask, could the totals continue to fluctuate if voters are not participating? The answer: superdelegates. Here, a guide to those political creatures and the role they will play in deciding the Democratic nominee for president.
What's a superdelegate?
As much of America must know by now, superdelegates are those Democratic Party leaders and elected officials who are automatically delegates to the national convention. In order to win the Democratic presidential nomination, a candidate must win not only the pledged delegates who are apportioned according to the results of the primaries or caucuses, but enough of the superdelegates, who can choose to endorse whichever candidate they wish, regardless of the results of primaries in their state or district.
Who gets to be a superdelegate?
Every Democratic member of the House and Senate, every Democratic governor and members of the Democratic National Committee (such as state party chairs, vice chairs and national committeemen and women) automatically get to be superdelegates. Also included: former Democratic presidents and vice presidents, former Democratic House and Senate leaders, and ex-DNC chairs.
How do superdelegates decide which candidate to support?
Though they aren't bound by the results of primaries or caucuses, superdelegates will often throw their support to whomever they think will make the stronger presidential nominee in the general election. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar says that's one of the reasons why she decided to endorse Obama on Monday.
Sometimes, pressure back home makes a difference. Georgia Rep. John Lewis, an influential member of Congress, initially endorsed Clinton last year. But his district went overwhelmingly for Obama in the February primary, so Lewis made the unusual decision to switch his support to the Illinois senator.
How many superdelegates are there?
That figure is a moving target. For a long time, the number was listed at 796. But then things began to happen: Eliot Spitzer, the governor of New York, resigned following a sex scandal. That removed one superdelegate (he happened to support Clinton). Puerto Rico Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila, who is under indictment in a corruption case, is under pressure to resign, too. (He supports Obama).
The Democrats picked up a superdelegate when they won the congressional seat of former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert in a special election in Illinois in March. They lost one with the death of Rep. Tom Lantos of California. But they will regain that superdelegate if former state Sen. Jackie Speier, who is heavily favored, wins the special election to fill the remainder of Lantos' term. And so on.
How many are still undecided?
Roughly 250 or so superdelegates have yet to commit to a candidate. (There are 70 or so additional superdelegates who will not be named until the conventions).
The 250 superdelegates are being wooed by Clinton and Obama in a process is mostly hidden from public view, but its importance cannot be overstated. It is mathematically impossible for either Obama or Clinton to win the Democratic nomination outright without these superdelegates.
Where did the concept of superdelegates come from?
Democrats first introduced superdelegates in 1984 as a safety net — they wanted to give the party elders a voice in choosing the nominee. The goal: to prevent the Democrats from repeating what many viewed as a mistake when they nominated Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota in 1972. McGovern went on to lose 49 states that year.
Similarly, former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter won the nomination in 1976, against the wishes of many in the party establishment. We should note, however, that their support for former Vice President Walter Mondale, the choice of the Democratic establishment, in 1984 is widely credited with putting him over the top against challenger Gary Hart. Mondale went on to lose 49 states that November.
Why do superdelegates get to play such a big role?
They don't — usually. That's because in the past, the battle for the Democratic nomination had been settled fairly early. Michael Dukakis (in 1988) and Bill Clinton (four years later) established themselves as the clear front-runners fairly early in the process. It was even more one-sided in 2000, when Democrats nominated Al Gore, and in 2004, when John Kerry got the nod. The superdelegates really didn't have much of a role to play. But this time it's different. Neither Obama nor Clinton is running away with the nomination. And that puts the supers in a position they have never been in before.
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