Posted by Jed Lewison on Fri Apr 25, 2008 at 3:33 PM Pacific

Superdelegates should let voters score the final touchdown

There is no longer any question about whether or if Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for president. The question now is when and how he will be recognized as the party's presumptive nominee.

It will happen sometime before the Democratic National Convention, just as soon as he secures the 2,024 delegates it will take to win the nomination on the convention floor. When that moment is upon us, everything else that has happened in the campaign will be overshadowed, rendered moot in an instant.

Think of that moment like the final touchdown that puts away a football game for good. And in this football game, superdelegates control when and where that touchdown will occur. They have two options. They can try to score themselves, or they can hand the ball off to voters, and let the voters finish the game off.

Their decision won't change the outcome of the game. It will, however, change voter's perceptions about the winner of the game -- in this case, Barack Obama.

When Barack Obama is declared the presumptive nominee, it will be tremendously important that he be seen as having won on the strength of his electoral victories. To allow the formation of the unfair and absurd perception that an elite group of insiders handed him the nomination would be incredibly damaging to Democratic prospects in the fall.

Unfortunately, we now find ourselves in a situation where superdelegates run the very real risk of letting that happen. If they don't act soon -- before May 20, as I will show -- they will give Obama's political opponents all the ammunition they need to develop such a crippling narrative.

Fortunately, there is simple way for superdelegates to avoid this outcome. How? Before May 20, 99 of the undeclared or Clinton supporting superdelegates must either endorse Barack Obama, or commit to supporting the winner of the pledged delegate battle (becoming members of the so-called "Pelosi Club").

Let me explain why May 20, the date of the Kentucky and Oregon primaries, is so crucial.

(By the way, everything in this post is moot if Barack Obama wins both North Carolina and Indiana on May 6 and Hillary Clinton withdraws from the race. But the superdelegates can’t control that, so from their perspective, they should still focus on May 20.)

May 20 is important because on that day Barack Obama will have finally surpassed the magic number of 1,627 pledged delegates, securing himself a majority of the 3,253 democratically selected delegates headed to Denver. At that point, he will become the nominee unless there is a coup by superdelegates against the voters. It would be the perfect day for Obama to become the presumptive nominee.

Let’s take a closer look at the math of May 20:

Conservatively, Obama will have 1,650 pledged delegates (likely more)
Add in his 234 superdelegates (as of April 25) and he’ll have 1,884 total delegates
Factor in the minimum 33 add-on delegates he is certain to get and he’ll have 1,917 total delegates

Now, remember it will take 2,024 delegates to win the nomination. Based on current superdelegate totals he will have at least 1,917 total delegates on May 20, a difference of 107 delegates.

That means that between now and May 20, if Barack Obama can secure support from 107 superdelegates, on May 20 he will have won the 2,024 delegates he needs to be officially declared the presumptive nominee, ending the nomination battle.

(Remember that after May 20, just over 100 pledged delegates will remain to be selected, meaning Obama would ultimately need just 40-45 more delegates to hit 2,024. Again, the question isn't whether or if Obama will win. The question is when and how he'll hit 2,024.)

The interesting twist is that to hit the 2,024 number is that on May 20, Barack Obama doesn’t actually need all those 107 superdelegates to endorse him. They can also declare their support for the “Pelosi standard,” meaning they will support the candidate who wins the most pledged delegates. Moreover, it doesn’t matter whether those superdelegates have endorsed Clinton or not – a vote is a vote.

In fact, at this point there are already 8 members of the “Pelosi club” – so Barack Obama actually only needs 99 more superdelegates to either endorse his campaign, or announce their support for the “Pelosi standard.” This should be doable -- we are talking about just over two-fifths of undeclared superdelegates.

(Remember these projections are conservative. In all likelihood, he won’t even need 99 superdelegates – given Obama’s likely performance in primaries between now and May 20, that number is more likely to be 89 or 90. 99, however, would be a guarantee.)

Why should these superdelegates either endorse Obama now or agree to the Pelosi standard?

The reason is simple and it is profoundly important: by making their decision before May 20, superdelegates will allow Barack Obama to clinch the nomination on the same day he secures a majority of pledged delegates.

In other words, it will be the voters of Oregon who actually push Barack Obama across the finish line. If the superdelegates wait until after May 20, insiders will be the ones who push Barack Obama across the line.

From the standpoint of who wins the nomination, it makes no difference. Obama has it wrapped up. But if superdelegates “score the final touchdown,” Barack Obama's political opponents will try to develop a narrative about Barack Obama's inability to win the nomination by himself, making it seem like the party leaders helped him achieve what he could do accomplish on his own. (That would be an asburd storyline to make about the guy who won a majority of pledged delegates, but since when has that been an obstacle?)

It should be obvious how destructive such a storyline would be for Barack Obama, and how Republicans would seek to take advantage of that perception. Just ask the North Carolina Republican Party.

If superdelegates really want to help Barack Obama, the best thing they can do is endorse him or the Pelosi standard now, or at least by May 20.

If 99 of them do it, the voters of Oregon will make Barack Obama the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party on May 20.

Allowing the voters to end this thing would be the best possible outcome, given the current state of the race.

Just about everybody wants this battle to come to an end, and there's no longer any uncertainty or doubt about its eventual outcome. One option is for superdelegates to pick the winner in June. The other option is to let voters end it on May 20. Either way, we’re going to have the same nominee.

For the sake of the party, let’s let the people of Oregon end this thing. Let's let there be a celebration at the conclusion of this campaign. Let’s put the voters first, and let's let the healing of the primary bruises begin.