Steven Grossman's Departure from Democracy

But what happens after the final primaries are over in early June, when by most analyses neither Senator Clinton nor Senator Obama will have enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination? If the role of super delegates is merely to assess primary and caucus results, how do they wade through the thicket created by the important questions that those results have generated?

Should caucuses, in which citizens who wish to express their choice are obliged to either show up at an appointed hour and sit in a room for up to several hours or not show up at all, be regarded as reflecting the popular will as much as primaries, where voters whose lives do not permit them to spend three hours in a locked room at the end of a workday can simply go into their local elementary school, vote and leave--like voters across the country do on the first Tuesday in November?

Should the results in states that have rarely if ever voted Democratic in a presidential election over the last half century be accorded the same weight as the results in large states that form the heart of the Democratic base, and which the Democratic presidential nominee must carry in order to win the White House?

Should primaries in which voters who are not in fact members of the Democratic party voted in significant numbers be given the same standing for the purpose of choosing the Democratic party nominee as those in which only Democrats voted?

These are difficult questions, if not impossible ones, and super delegates who see their duty as mere numbers crunchers will have a difficult time sorting out the answers.

But being a super delegate is not the same as being a numbers cruncher. It is about consulting one’s conscience about what is best for the United States, and about the party that we hope will assume the leadership of the United States.

I have made my own personal judgment, and that is that Senator Clinton is the better qualified, more experienced and by far the more battle-tested Democrat to lead this country in a world that is increasingly dangerous, and where the stakes simply could not be higher. Others have made a different choice, and may yet make a different choice. But for the moment, super delegates who are not committed to either candidate should resist the blandishments of those who would trivialize their roles in the nominating process, and their responsibilities to the party, and to the country, about which we care so deeply.