You’re No One In This Country Until You’re A Super Delegate

What is a super delegate? Why doesn’t anyone in America understand how the electoral process works? Have we moved forward in this country at all since it was mostly populated by illiterate farmers? Once every four years, as presidential election time rolls around, these are the questions that come screeching into our national consciousness. This week, the rude awakening happened when we realized that the regular Democratic delegates are so closely divvied up between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that something called the super-delegates may have to be called in to choose a winner. Who are the super delegates? People far more important than you:

[There are] 796 “super delegates” — a special class of delegates not bound by the primary and caucus results when they go to the party’s national convention in Denver in August.

Also they can bend spoons with their minds.

These super delegates — made up largely of Democratic National Committee (DNC) members and current and former elected officials — could well decide the outcome of the Democratic race if neither Clinton nor Obama captures the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the convention.

Democrats created the super-delegate system in 1982 to give certain party officials, based on the positions they hold, a greater voice in the nominating process. In 1984, they backed eventual nominee Walter Mondale over Gary Hart by wide margins. Republicans do not have a similar system.

Both Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are super-delegates. And some 23 year-old college kid named Awais Khaleel. Bet he gets laid a lot this semester. As for the rest of us, we remain illiterate farmers.

‘Super delegates’ could hold key to Democratic nomination [USA Today]