Uncommitted Delegates

[Updated]Post-hiatus Donkey Hottie is about using literature in posts, not just recreating political arguments distilled from a few Daily Kos posts. So as the Obama/Clinton standoff starts inching itself closer and closer to a mess of a convention in Denver, I feel it is useful to bring up a great scene from Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.

I watched earlier tonight on CNN an argument between Willie Brown and a younger fellow. Both are superdelegates from California. Brown seemed to be taking a pro-Clinton line, arguing that as a superdelegate from California, he was bound to vote for the person who won his state. [I misremembered this. See update] The other fellow equivocated, however, maintaining an uncommitted status while also suggesting that he might go for Obama.

The preening, younger uncommitted delegate reminded me of the uncommitted delegate in Thompson’s book. “The whole purpose of getting yourself elected as an Uncommitted delegate is to be able to arrive at the Convention with bargaining power,” Thompson begins, “ideology has nothing to do with it.” You have your list of demands in your head, and you try to find a candidate who needs your vote to push him or her over the top. Then you can collect on your debt. Thompson continues:

If your price is a lifetime appointment as a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court, your only hope is to deal with a candidate who is so close to that magic 1509 figure that he can no longer function in public because of uncontrollable drooling. If he is stuck around 1400 you will probably not have much luck getting that bench appointments . . . but if he’s already up to 1499 he won’t hesitate to offer you the first opening on the U.S. Supreme Court … The game will get heavy sometimes. You don’t want to go around putting the squeeze on people unless you’re absolutely clean. No skeletons in the closet: no secret vices . . . because if your vote is important and your price is high, the Fixer-Man will have already checked you out by the time he offers to buy you a drink. If you bribed a traffic-court clerk two years ago to bury a drunk driving charge, [ah, the 70s...] the Fixer might suddenly confront you with a photostat of the citation you thought had been burned.

When that happens, you’re fucked. Your price just went down to zero, and you are no longer an Uncommitted delegate.

Thompson then moves through a couple versions of the “Reverse-squeeze,” which bleeds into an extended anecdote involving you, Virgil the Uncommitted delegate, and J. D. Squane, a worker for Senator Bilbo. He sets up a dinner meeting, but instead of coming to the door himself at 7, the knocks at the door come from a young woman who gets you high and totally messed up, such that, “Many hours later, 4:30 A.M. Soaking wet, falling into the lobby, begging for help: No wallet, no money, no ID. Blood on both hands and one shoe missing.”

Squane runs into you at lunch, and is sad that you blew him off for dinner. You complain about the girl, and he swears he doesn’t know what you’re talking about:

“That girl you sent; we went someplace to meet you.”

“Bullshit! You double-crossed me, Virgil! If we weren’t on the same team I might be tempted to lean on you.”

Rising anger now, painful throbbing in the head. “Fuck you, Squane! I’m on nobody’s team! If you want my vote you know damn well how to get it—and that goddamn dope-addict girlfriend of yours didn’t help any.”

Squane smiles heavily. “Tell me, Virgil—what was it you wanted for the vote of yours? A seat on the federal bench?”

“You’re goddamn fuckin’-A right! You got me in bad trouble last night, J. D. When I got back here my wallet was gone and there was blood on my hands.”

“I know. You beat the shit out of her.”

“What?”

“Look at these photographs, Virgil. It’s some of the most disgusting stuff I’ve ever seen.”

“Photographs?”

Squane hands them across the table.

“Oh my god!”

“Yeah, that’s what I said, Virgil.”

“No! This can’t be me! I never saw that girl! Christ, she’s only a child!”

“That’s why the pictures are so disgusting, Virgil. You’re lucky we didn’t take them straight to the cops and have you locked up.” Pounding the table with his fist. “That’s rape, Virgil! That’s sodomy! With a child!”

“No!”

“Yes, Virgil—and now you’re going to pay for it.”

“How? What are you talking about?”

Squane smiling again. “Votes, my friend. Yours and five others. Six votes for six negatives. Are you ready?”

Tears of rage in the eyes now. “You evil sonofabitch! You’re blackmailing me!”

“Ridiculous, Virgil. Ridiculous. I’m talking about coalition politics.”

Part of me wonders how much of Obama’s appeal can be tied into how clean he seems—he seems so above having Fixers like Squane on his payroll. But perhaps, in order to win, he will start needing to have the types around.

UPDATE: I knew that if I waited, I would get more information about the two people I saw on CNN. Along with Willie Brown was Edward Espinoza, who worked for the Richardson campaign. The transcript of their visit to CNN is at the end of this page. Brown believes that superdelegates should vote their conscience—they are very certainly not bound to the state winner. What he said regarding state results was to try and trip up Espinoza. In making the “Obama” argument that superdelegates should follow the “will” of the people, it is unclear where that will is drawn. If the superdelegate is a congressperson, should he or she vote for the candidate who carried his or her district? State? The national vote? There are a lot of ways to measure this will of the people, ways that yield different responses. In that sense, Brown is right—it’s weasely to say, once your state is done voting, that you are still uncommitted because you are awaiting the will of… who, exactly? Everyone ever?

On the other hand, Brown is wrong to suggest that superdelegates are purely unbound from what the rest of the delegates decide. The system was developed to prevent another McGovern, to prevent a flash in the pan from overexciting the base and marching to the general election completely unelectable. Yet that does not describe Obama at all. What the superdelegates are shaping out to be is little more than the “Uncommitted delegates” Thompson describes above—people who want something or have a loyalty to one instantiation of the the Democratic machine.

Tags: Barack Obama, coalition politics, Democrats, Fear and Loathing, Hillary Rodham Clinton, HST, Superdelegates