I believe that by choosing “suspend” rather than “quit” Edwards remains elegible to accumulate delegates - but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Somewhere in the verbage there is a passage about delegate loyalty, something about a moral responsibility to reflect the wishes of the electorate, but it falls short of strict directive; my reading is that once seated all of the delegates are actually free to vote however they please - but again, I wouldn’t bet on it.

The first couple of days of the convention should be another wonderful display of Democratic disorganization while the rules get resorted and contested delegates get seated - or not.

Some states have the concept that a write-in candidate is only eligible if they submitted the signatures / registered as a candidate. ie. even 50% of the voter wrote-in Bart Simpson, they couldn’t win the election.

I do wonder about the Primaries why someone cannot win if they were on the ballot. Shouldn’t the states have to remove candidate names if ineligible? Like Nader in 2004?

The superdelegates make the Democratic Primary a completely undemocratic process, leaving far too much power in the hands of the party of incumbency. Maybe that’s why there’s so little discussion about it.

The New York Times for example ducks the question in their Super Tuesday election guide simply referring to “unpledged” delegates and ignoring superdelegates who have committed to a candidate.

That information can be found at this Superdelegate endorsement list.

Ari Berman of The Nation has some a good background on how we got here— Not So Superdelegates.

On the question of Edwards’ former superdelegates, they’re now free to vote for another candidate but they are listed here.

the whole process has too many trips and special clauses and behind the scenes “rules” that can be negotiated for me to feel that it’s truly “democratic.” few people appreciate just how much control the parties themselves have over the electorate, and to my mind it’s not right. the process should be clear, open, and exclusively related to the demonstrated will of the party voters. i just don’t have confidence, no matter what the “rules say,” that this will happen.

superdelagates, “process” and “rules,” and a lot of backroom dealing will determine what happens to the edwards’ people at the convention.

ma jones

In the early states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, the presidential candidates pushed hard for victories that would yield few delegates but garner them momentum and media buzz, and separate them from the rest of the pack. But now that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have reached February 5’s almost-nationwide primary, they’ve adopted a new strategy: pushing for “close enough.”

It’s a product of the all-powerful but little-understood role of delegates in deciding primary elections. In this historic and unique election, the technical details of how delegates are awarded may have more to do with choosing a Democratic nominee than all the media buys, GOTV operations, and newspaper endorsements put together.

Under Democratic Party rules, states divide their delegates proportionally according to vote totals at the state and district level. The rules for awarding delegates are very complex and vary from state to state (which will make figuring out the true results of Super Duper Tuesday a challenging task for the media). But in most places, the system works like this: say four delegates are up for grabs in a congressional district; if one candidate wins 30,000 votes in that district and the other wins 20,000, both will take home two delegates.

In the example, one candidate won 60 percent to 40 percent—a very substantial victory. But in order to give three delegates to the winner and a single delegate to the loser, the final vote would have had to be closer to 75/25. The less unfair but still imperfect way to divide the district’s four delegates is to give two to the winner and two to the loser.

This creates a focus on districts that have an odd number of delegates. Districts which, through the quirks of state party rules, have five delegates will give three to the winner and two to the loser in even a 51/49 split of the popular vote.

This also creates a powerful incentive for the candidates to do what they can to come close even in states and districts they expect to lose. Consequently, Obama is running ads in New York and campaigning in the tri-state area, Hillary Clinton’s backyard, and Bill Clinton is campaigning in Illinois, where Obama should win big. As a general rule of thumb, the second-place candidate only has to draw a meager 30 percent of the vote in a state to be guaranteed roughly half the state’s delegates.

This means that if there is no blowout on February 5, and no one is currently expecting one, all of these state contests could produce a close delegate count that propels the race into late February and March—if not beyond. In fact, it is possible that Hillary Clinton could win the popular vote by small margins across the country (and have what looks like a sweep on Wolf Blitzer’s giant electronic map) and yet be tied in or behind in the delegate count.

“The reality is we really are in a delegate-by-delegate battle,” Guy Cecil, Clinton’s national political and field director, has said. “At the end of the day, this is a delegate contest,” says David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager.

For Obama, who is trailing in the polls in most February 5 states, this means he does not have to come out the winner. He need only survive. After February 5, the primary schedule returns to normal—that is, it stretches out—and candidates will have the opportunity to focus on individual states and work voters thoroughly before they go to the polls.

This is a format that benefits Obama. The early states all showed the same pattern: Obama trailed Clinton in the polls for months, presumably due to “low-information voters” identifying their preference to pollsters based primarily on name recognition and loyalty to the Clinton brand. But when Obama had weeks to campaign in a state (sometimes just days), he closed the gap rather quickly, either winning the state or finishing a close second. Moreover, Obama has been tallying endorsements and building on-the-ground machines recently that match or surpass Clinton’s impressive operation.

After February 5, Obama will have four days to campaign in Louisiana and Nebraska. (Delegate-poor Maine, voting a day later, will likely receive only token interest.) Then he’ll have three days to devote to the Potomac Primary of Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Next, he’ll have five days to campaign in Washington and Wisconsin (Hawaii, voting the same day, is where Obama grew up and likely won’t require much of his face time). After that, if Obama still has a fighting chance at the nomination, he has two weeks before the bonanza primaries on March 4 in Ohio and Texas (Rhode Island and Vermont also vote that day). For the rest of March, only Wyoming and Mississippi hold primaries, meaning the April 22 Pennsylvania primary could be decisive.

The schedule might well help Obama, but it probably helps the Republican nominee more than anyone. That’s because the Republican Party has winner-take-all rules in many large February 5 states. So if John McCain beats Mitt Romney by 1 percent in New York state (though he is expected to win by much more than that there), he gets all of New York’s 101 delegates. In all likelihood, the Republican race will be decided by February 6 or shortly thereafter. The Republican nominee will then have weeks, if not months, to hone his message, raise money, and rest up before the Democratic nominee emerges.

These rules put Romney at a severe disadvantage, primarily because Mike Huckabee is expected to contend strongly in the South. If Romney takes a close second to McCain in New York and New Jersey and takes a close second to Huckabee in Missouri and West Virginia, he will get zero delegates. Under the Democratic rules, he’d still be very much in the game.

In the Democratic race, there is a possibility that the delegate count will be so close going into the convention that super delegates will matter. Super delegates are Democratic governors, members of Congress, and other party luminaries who each have single vote. There are 796 of these super delegates, and they compose about 20 percent of the total delegates. Exact counts vary, but Hillary Clinton has the support of roughly 200 super delegates, and Barack Obama has the support of about 100. Super delegates are not technically bound to vote for anyone, and can switch their support at any time, including at the convention.

If the Democrats reach that point, they’ll be entering uncharted territory. John Edwards will be under intense pressure to instruct his small handful of delegates to support a candidate, and the delegates will be under intense pressure from the campaign that doesn’t get Edwards’ endorsement to disregard the former Senator’s instructions (which they are allowed to do). Clinton will likely make a major push for seating the delegates she won in Michigan, where her only competition was “uncommitted,” and in Florida, where campaigning was banned.

And delegates pledged for Obama and Clinton will come under pressure to defect. When an individual seeks to become a delegate, he or she is usually a very active member of a candidate’s campaign at the state or local level. The candidates essentially hand-pick their delegates. But once the delegates get to the convention, they are only required, under Democratic Party rules, to “in good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” That means they can cast a ballot for any candidate they choose. In this year’s Democratic convention, they may actually have more than one option.

they are always so useful, MJ that is.

… turn into a way to delegitimize any HRC success a la NH and NV. That and any discrepancy between exit polling and the vote caused by mail-ins.

There will be blood….

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

God. You are an idiot. Get over it. Edwards sucked as a candidate.

You are looking like a psycho.

Thank you for commenting, anonymous coward. Your comment is very important to us. Please do not hesitate to comment again.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

In states with elections, the process is for local party organizations to select a group of people committed to a specific candidate, forming a “slate.” The names and resumes are sent to the respective candidates for approval or rejection, with a back-and-forth requirement to negotiate replacements. When you vote, you are actually electing a “slate of delegates” rather than the candidate. Because a write-in name would have no slate, the vote would be of no effect.

with Edwards nominally staying in, and at least tacitly, urging his supporters (of which I was as loyal a one as anyone posting on the internet) is that he misses a chance to help put an end to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

This is not rocket science. The republicans are going into this election with more negatives than any political party in decades; maybe, with more than any party in our history.

And there is only one candidate who can rescue them.

Her name is Hillary Clinton.

Republicans; conservatives across the board; and a ton of independents, simply detest her; and they will get out of their death beds and crawl on bleeding stumps to the polls to vote to keep her out of the white house.

If she had fought the good fight for progressives,
then I, and a lot of other progressives, might be persuaded to fight for HER, but she’s been in and out of bed with george bush and the warbots more times than a $10 hooker.
She has not risked one micron of her political butt to fight against the people who’ve brought us to the point at which we now are. Instead, it was John, who, on some of the most important issues, led she (and Obama) to the trough and made them drink. She, and her supporters thought that she had some kind of birthright to a coronation.

Well, Obama, with help from John, put that to rest, and now she has to get out of the limo and grub for it, just like the rest of the candidates.
And, as we saw in South Carolina, Bill can’t do it for her.

But lumping she and Obama together is nonsense. He’s a decent man, and obviously, a hell of a campaigner. He has some corporate warts, but let’s be honest, and admit that Edwards had some votes in his term in congress which were less than supportive of our side, on issues. As he himself courageously reminded us, in the speeches I saw him make, he’s not perfect. None of them are.

And now we’re faced with two candidates, but one of them can, and will, go at John McCain with hammer and tongs, for his seemingly channeling Generals Patton and Custer, with the idiocy of his “I can stay for a hundred years” statement, while the other one stood and applauded lustily, a few nights ago, when george bush was slathering on the “surge accomplished” nonsense. (I was delighted to see Obama sitting in the House chamber, as stone-faced and mute as the Sphinx, when that was happening, and I was sickened to see Clinton enthusiastically applauding.)

FAR more than Clinton, he is ready, willing, and ABLE to shred the GOP for what they’ve done to us.

He has run a fair campaign against John. Nothing unfair; nothing outrageous, and I believe if Edwards was on here now, he would say so, himself.

We cannot afford to flirt with the disaster of Hillary Clinton as our nominee. The sight of HER making an acceptance speech in Denver, will have Karl Rove and the GOP braintrust dancing naked in their living rooms.

I was hoping that John and Al Gore would both come out for Obama, and by doing it, effectively end Hillary’s Chance to be the giant lifeboat rescuing the republicans from the deck of the USS BushTanic. It looks like that won’t happen.

But this is graven in stone: writing in John’s name in these state primaries will be, in substantial measure, tantamount to writing in John McCain’s, because the benefits from doing that that will flow directly to Hillary Clinton, and there is no other candidate who can or will, save the GOP from the democratic tsunami that is building for next November. If we’re politically suicidal enough to nominate her, she’ll be worth 12-15 percentage points to them in the general. If we put up Obama, then neither Diebolt, nor the Supreme Court, nor John McCain, will be a factor. It won’t be close enough for them to steal.

It’s no accident that in EVERY progressive straw poll taken by a progressive blog such as Kos, or FDL, or by progressive organization such as MoveOn.Org, she simply gets hammered. We KNOW how she’s voted and how repulsively she’s flip-flopped on the war and other issues, and if she’s now being utterly rejected by the progressive wing of the party, think what will happen in the “battleground” states. There are a lot of good democrats who simply cannot bring themselve to vote for her.

John has had a great run. He’s led on bringing the issue of corporate influence in our government to the fore. He would have made a great president, and may yet, down the road. But I respect his decision to withdraw from the race. And I do NOT want to see him take the second spot on anyone’s ticket. That, as we all know, is a political graveyard. VP’s have a hard time translating that position into the presidency for themselves.

Conversely, I would love to see him as A.G. in an Obama administration. I think he would have free reign to begin digging into the 8 years of chicanery and corruption that bush and his petro-borgs have given us. If that happens, I think we’ll be hearing things come out that would make our hair stand on end. And all to the good.
It’s a natural spot for him. I think, and wish, he would have claimed it by coming out for Obama today, but if it’s there, down the road, then that is the office I’d like to see him get.

But first, we have to get about the business of stopping Clinton. And to do that, we need to think about the effect of writing in John’s name, and think hard about it, because if she wins big tomorrow, or, perhaps, wins at all, then she can come to Denver and wipe her feet with any delegates that John might have accrued.

In fact I suspect the recycled versions are already written as we speak?

Except that the other versions have our AC writing to “former supporters of [Romney] [Huckabee] [Paul] (of which I was as loyal a one as anyone posting on the internet)” (fill in depending on which mailing list/blog you’re targeting).

A couple of months from now this will be going around with the paragraph changed from

It’s no accident that in EVERY progressive straw poll taken by a progressive blog such as Kos, or FDL, or by progressive organization such as MoveOn.Org, she simply gets hammered.

changed to “EVERY poll taken on loyal Republican blogs such as RedState, Captain’s Quarters or conservative organizations such as Focus on the Family say Hillary is” blah blah blah same crap.

Look at it again. It really writes itself.

Sometimes you wind up liking somebody more when you look at who their enemies are, and are not sure that’s a group you’d like to be charged with belonging to.

Here’s another version from TPM.

Nice work, OFB. Of course, polluting every blog that allows open comments with Axelrod’s latest boilerplate is a small price to pay for He Who Is The One, Obama. Sure, Hillary cooked and ate Vince Foster’s baby, but at least she’s not pissing in my well.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

i’m sticking w/Edwards tomorrow, and whoever gets it in Nov. Let my vote be seen if nothing else than a message about wanting more choices, which is what primaries are supposed to be about.

I made a commitment, and I mean to keep it.

And hereafter, I’ll be bringing news and info as I find it on the “Edwards wing of the Democratic party” to corrente — until they kick me out.

My staircase has many doors. :)

We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

He gets his very own wing? Not that I’m denying his being shiny and all, and heaven knows there are few who can match his record of a single term in the Senate with a go-along-to-get-along, safe-for-the-conservative-folks-back-home voting record followed by a failed run for the Vice-Presidency and capped by a second failed run for the Democratic Presidential nomination, but I’d like to see a little bit more for a little bit longer before giving him a whole named branch of the Party. More than happy to see him assigned a corner with a view and the opportunity to do enough good to make amends for the harm he did while in the Senate; including punitive damages, to be fair. Then we’ll see about that wing thing.

And just because I voted for him by mail a couple of weeks ago after Smilin’ Johnny swore to the whole world that he was in it for the duration but before he decided otherwise, I’m not bitter – no one can see the future – but I would have liked my vote to matter in the outcome and now it probably will not.

My view, when Edwards suspended his campaign he also suspended any compact that may have existed between him and future voters. If the outcome of this primary comes down to one vote in one district sometime further on in the process, it will be important that every future vote be cautiously considered, carefully weighed and thoughtfully cast; hopefully more carefully, more thoughtfully and more cautiously than was mine.

John Edwards is a good, decent, sincere, honest man and I am pleased that he is in public life, but he is no longer an active part of the electoral solution to our current problems. If I could get my vote back and give it tomorrow to another, I would.