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Superdelegates like Bredesen's idea for breaking stalemate

March 23, 2008 —  Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen has pegged his political persona to his reputation as a successful businessman. That’s the way he approached the toughest challenge he’s faced in office, dismantling the state’s troubled Tenncare system. And it comes through very clearly in Bredesen’s proposal for a way out of the Democratic presidential nomination deadlock.

“We Democrats have a problem, but it’s one we can fix,” Bredesen wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece published last Wednesday.

The party has two good candidates, wrote Bredesen, who as a Democratic superdelegate has not committed to either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. But the party faces “a long summer of brutal and unnecessary warfare” if it doesn’t resolve the current stalemate, he wrote, and will be left with only two months before the General Election if the standoff isn’t resolved before the Democratic National Convention in early September.

What Bredesen proposes is to hold a primary, or public caucus, of the 795 superdelegates soon after the last primaries are over in early June. Any decision would still have to be ratified at the convention, but a “transparent vote” by the convened superdelegates could lead to a clear result and put “enormous moral pressure” on the candidates to accept the result.

As the governor describes it, his proposal sounds a little like the meeting of a corporate board in advance of a shareholders’ meeting.

“This is not a proposal for a mini-convention with all the attendant hoopla and sideshows. It is a care for a tight, two-day business-like gathering,” he wrote in the Times.

Michael Drescher, a Bredesen spokesman, said Democrats inside the Beltway have been somewhat more guarded in their response to the proposal than in the nation at large, questioning whether the plan might be too complicated to pull off. But overall, he said, reaction to the idea has been positive. But he said only the Democratic National Committee would be able to make the idea become reality.

We contacted several superdelegates across the South last week and found a uniformly favorable – if cautious – response.

“I really don’t want it to come down to the superdelegates, but if that’s what it takes, the sooner the better,” said Jane Kidd, the chair of the Georgia Democratic Party, who supports Obama.

“I think it’s an innovative idea, an exciting idea. I’m all for it,” said Knoxville businessman William S. Owen, who supports Clinton.

Even if there were a convocation of superdelegates, there would still be the thorny problem of what to do about Florida and Michigan. Owen noted that with the exception of South Carolina, all the state parties in the South voted last July to seat the Florida delegation. He views Florida, where the Republican majority in the legislature pushed the plan to move up the primary, as different from Michigan, where Democrats have responsibility for moving up the date.

Rep. David Scott of Georgia, who like his colleague, Rep. John Lewis, has shifted his support from Clinton to Obama, also praised Bredesen’s idea as “good thinking,” but cautioned that what the superdelegates do must be “based upon the will of the people.”

“The superdelegates can’t be seen as going into a back room and snatching away the nomination,” said Scott, whose district sprawls over much of South Metro Atlanta.

But Scott acknowledged the need to reach a conclusion to the campaign as soon as possible.

“If we go into the convention as we are now, with all the animosity, we will lose the election,” Scott said. “We’re going to need those months just to get happy with each other.”

Will Cheek, a former Tennessee Democratic Party chairman who supports Obama, said he assumed Washington would be the likeliest location for the gathering, if it comes off.

But Cheek noted that the Southern superdelegates have already scheduled a meeting in Mobile June 19, which might be the venue for a larger gathering if the idea takes hold.

Such a gathering wouldn't favor either candidate, he said, but would simply move the decision-making process up by a couple of months before the Democrats head to the their convention in Denver.

What we haven’t done yet is to find out what the two campaigns think of the idea, and it’s a good bet that until next month’s Pennsylvania primary, both camps will be guarded about the idea.

 But the calendar isn’t getting any longer, and Democrats know that if they aren’t to be disappointed yet again this fall, somebody’s going to have to get off the dime.