KEY POINTS:
Barack Obama made important gains in his bid to secure the Democratic nomination at the weekend, taking more delegates amid warnings from party grandees that it would be disastrous to overturn the will of rank-and-file members who have given him a narrow lead over Hillary Clinton.
The Illinois Senator's fragile advantage expanded as the party in Iowa and California apportioned the delegates that will go to the summer convention that chooses the candidate. The usual razzamatazz of the convention, usually a coronation of a presumptive nominee, is threatening to be replaced by grubby wheeling and dealing for the support of the so-called "super-delegates".
These are the great and the good of the party, who can support either candidate and who hold the balance of power after votes in state after state have failed to give a clear lead to either side. Mrs Clinton has made a not-so-subtle pitch for their support by promising to offer the vice-presidential nomination to the less-experienced Mr Obama, an idea he has waved away.
But yesterday Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives and officially the most senior female member of the Democrat party, appeared on television to warn of the consequences of a back-stairs deal. "If the votes of the super-delegates overturn what's happened in the elections, it would be harmful to the Democratic party," she said in an interview with ABC's This Week. Super-delegates should fall in behind the person who emerges from the state-by-state popular vote with the most number of pledged delegates, she said.
This view, promoted by the Obama camp since he took the lead last month, appears to have gained wide support among the super-delegates, and particularly among those who have not so far indicated a preference, according to a survey by The New York Times published yesterday.
The Democrat Representative Jason Altmire, of Pennsylvania, told the newspaper: "If we get to the end and Senator Obama has won more states, has more delegates and more popular vote I would need some sort of rationale for why at that point any super-delegate would go the other way, seeing that the people have spoken."Mr Obama picked up at least nine delegates from Iowa, which began selecting its representatives for the convention on Saturday, two months after his victory in the vote there wiped away the sense of inevitability that had hung around the Clinton campaign for most of the past four years.
He claimed 52 per cent of the Iowa delegates compared with 32 per cent for Mrs Clinton, with some still sticking with John Edwards, who has dropped out. Also over the weekend, California's Democratic party finalised the delegate counts from its 5 February primary. The former first lady picked up two more pledged delegates; Mr Obama gained five.
- INDEPENDENT
