Squaring the Culture

In yet another example of Democrats engaging shamelessly in behaviors they condemn, we’re now hearing reports of both Democratic presidential campaigns contributing heavily to the campaigns of Superdelegates to the Democratic convention.

Superdelegates, themselves, are an indication that Democrats don’t believe the principles of their own party. After the raucous 1968, 1972, and 1976 Democratic conventions, the Democratic National Committee set up a system of ensuring that party bigwigs, who allegedly know better than the hoi-polloi in the trenches, get seated in the convention as voting members, in numbers large enough to influence a close election. Roughly 20% of the Democrats who vote in the convention are Superdelegates. Republicans also have Superdelegates, but in much smaller numbers, only 3 per state. National Review provides a primer on Superdelegates here, if you want a bit more information.

Capitol Eye, a newsletter published by the ostensibly non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, reports that Superdelegates have received more than $890,000 from both the Obama and Clinton campaigns over the past 3 years in the form of campaign contributions.

Obama, who narrowly leads in the count of pledged, “non-super” delegates, has doled out more than $694,000 to superdelegates from his political action committee, Hope Fund, or campaign committee since 2005. Of the 81 elected officials who had announced as of Feb. 12 that their superdelegate votes would go to the Illinois senator, 34, or 40 percent of this group, have received campaign contributions from him in the 2006 or 2008 election cycles, totaling $228,000. In addition, Obama has been endorsed by 52 superdelegates who haven’t held elected office recently and, therefore, didn’t receive campaign contributions from him.

Clinton does not appear to have been as openhanded. Her PAC, HILLPAC, and campaign committee appear to have distributed $195,500 to superdelegates. Only 12 percent of her elected superdelegates, or 13 of 109 who have said they will back her, have received campaign contributions, totaling about $95,000 since 2005.

Credit Boston.com (the Boston Globe’s blog) for the find.

Observers, as well as the Superdelegates themselves, say that the contributions have little effect on the behavior of the Superdelegates, who choose the candidate they intend to support on factors other than who contributed.

Deciding whom to support based entirely on contributions from the candidates would be a political liability, Herrera said [Richard Herrera is a political scientist at Arizona State University].

“I think Democrats, both regular delegates and superdelegates, see this year as an opportunity to really take back the White House,” he said, “and I don’t think there’s that short-term political concern that money will play that kind of role. It’s a much bigger picture at this point.”

The superdelegates themselves say the same thing—that any money flowing from the presidential candidates to the delegates’ own campaigns hasn’t had any sort of influence on their decisions.

So let me get this straight: do campaign contributions corrupt politicians, or not? Democrats seem to take it both ways — they do corrupt in the general election, but they do not corrupt Superdelegates in the primary. I suppose the guiding principle is “Democrats cannot be corrupted, Republicans can.”

I’m waiting for the Democrats to propose a law limiting contributions for Republican donors, but granting unlimited contribution capability for Democrat voters. Oh, wait, I forgot — don’t they do that already, regardless of the law?

Blue Crab Boulevard has picked up on this, and doesn’t believe the delegates’ denials.