Lieberman a Super Delegate for Democrats in 2008?

by: CaptCT

Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 08:14:59 AM EDT

I just came upon a disturbing realization today.  The Green Papers report on Democratic delegate allocation indicates 51 Senate super delegates.  51??  Does Joe Lieberman qualify to be a super delegate at the 2008 Democratic Convention?  I cannot think of a greater slap in the face than to have this shill for the Bush administration show up in Denver.  But he might do so.

So what exactly is a super delegate? Paraphrasing from Wikipedia, a super delegate is a delegate to a presidential nominating convention not bound by the decisions of party primaries or caucuses. "Superdelegates are usually party officials or elected officeholders. ... The aim was to allow party officials to have some say in the nominee."

Looking over the DNC's qualifications for super delegates, Joe seems to fail on 3 counts.

1. You have to actually be a Democrat. Eligibility is exteneded to "All Democratic members of the United States House of Representatives and all Democratic members of the United States Senate." Although Lieberman is a registered Democrat and caucuses with the Democrats, Lieberman won on the CFL ticket and considers himself an "Independent Democrat," whatever that means. 

2. You have to support a Democratic presidential candidate; the super delegate is disqualified if "any such member has publicly expressed support for the election of, or has endorsed, a presidential candidate of another political party." Joe has already said that he might support any Republican candidate who likes war as much as he does.

"I'm not going to make my selection of who to support for president in '08 based on party. I'm going to choose to support whichever of the candidates I think will be the best president of the United States to protect our security against the threat of Islamist terrorism and to rebuild America's economy ..."

3. One characteristic of unpledged, or super, delegates is that they are allowed to "vote their conscience." This assumes that Joe Lieberman has a conscience. One could argue that anyone who writes a bill to authorize military action against Iran, then peddles it as a means for economic sanctions, does not have a conscience.

johnnygunn ends his post with this final thought:

If you believe, like I do, that this violates Democratic Party rules and rewards someone for ignoring the results of a legitimate primary election, then I urge you to contact party officials at the DNC.

Here is the DNC e-mail website:

http://www.democrats.org/...

And their phone number:

202-863-8000