Posted on 04/27/2008 1:11:45 PM PDT by neverdem
If you were a fashion photographer back in the 1990s, you may have known what a superdel was: a high-priced “supermodel,” the word clipped to superdel by fashionistas.
That meaning has since been overwhelmed by a usage booming through the U.S. political world: superdelegates, who may or may not decide the next Democratic nominee for president. But that 14-letter word is too long for newspaper headlines, and five syllables is too many for fast-talking heads on telecasts, podcasts, Webcasts or IMcasts. Result: the name of the graying gang of glitterati on whom the multimedia spotlight now shines has been shortened to superdels.
How did the root word get its start? Back in 1980, when Senator Edward Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination, the party’s national convention was roiled by a furious fight over a rule that bound delegates to vote for the candidate in whose name they were selected. The Kennedy forces, behind in elected delegates, were able to change the rule to a more flexible instruction to delegates that they “shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” That looser rule exists to this day.
Such an appeal to conscience did not win the nomination for Kennedy, who lost to Carter, who in turn lost the general election to Ronald Reagan. But the divisiveness of the convention did lead to the appointment of a Democratic Party commission to make sure that a sizable percentage of delegates to the 1984 convention would be uncommitted PLEOs, an acronym for “party leaders elected officials.”
“I was a shill for the Kennedy forces at the time,” Susan Estrich, professor of law at U.S.C., informs me, “who were worried that in a prospective race with Fritz Mondale in ’84, the establishment would overwhelmingly favor Mondale..."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Got a love those democratic Democrats... Where some voters are more equal than other voters...
Splittism?
Never mind.
Yikes, credit for above to See Dub at MMalkins blog.
Go see the updates and check the thugdom roundup by Nice Deb while there... you’ll be glad you did.
Thanks for the link. McCain can boast “I’m the only major candidate not backed by terrorists!”
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