Maryland Adds to Superdelegate Nonsense

In a vote yesterday, the Maryland democratic party added two superdelegates to the 27 they already had for they were two short of the 29 superdelegates allotted to the state. These are in addition to the 70 pledged delegates of the state. As most voters now realize, the democratic party has close to 800 superdelegates. This is about twenty per cent of the overall available delegates from which a presidential candidate must receive 2025 to secure the party nomination.

Maryland has a total of 99 delegates and held their primary back on February 12th. Senator Barack Obama won 42 of the 70 pledged delegates and Senator Clinton won 28. This was based on the two-step aspect of awarding delegates proportionally by the popular vote and by congressional districts. Senator Clinton won only two (the 1st and 6th) of the eight congressional districts in the state.

Former Maryland Governor Paris Glendening and his former Lt. Governor, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend were the two superdelegates selected in what appears to be a move meant to not upset either the Clinton or Obama campaign. It turns out Glendening supports Obama and Townsend supports Clinton. So this vote to add - on superdelgates at this late date in the nomination process did not benefit either candidate.

Current Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley who is a superdelegate, has been a long time supporter of Senator Clinton who has campaigned for her in other states. Click here to see a list of the Maryland superdelegates and which candidate some of them support.

This is just one more example of the convoluted method in use by the democratic party to determine their presidential candidate. As mentioned in the previous post, will the Democratic National Committee (DNC) allow the superdelegates from Michigan (28) and Florida (25) to weigh in on which candidate they support? This would be a travesty after the sanctions imposed on them by the DNC essentially disenfranchised the voters of those two states.