Democrats' concern: 11th-hour deadlock

WASHINGTON — In a year that has seen Democratic voters flock to the polls but produce two evenly matched candidates, some party leaders are becoming alarmed that the process for deciding an eventual winner is in disarray, and that the decision may come down not to ordinary voters but to the group of 796 insiders known as "superdelegates."

Contributing to the tension is a continuing battle over the roles of Florida and Michigan, which were stripped of their participation in the party's national nominating convention due to a fight with the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, over the primary election calendar.

Now, with the prospect that neither Hillary Rodham Clinton nor Barack Obama will win a clear majority in the delegate count, a discussion is re-emerging over whether voters in those states should return to the polls and help pick the nominee, voting this time in an election formally sanctioned by the party.

"We're headed for a train wreck if we don't get this resolved," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., referring both to the role of superdelegates and to the DNC's decision to penalize his state. "It is a flawed system that has to be changed."

Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's 2000 campaign and is herself a superdelegate, threatened to quit her leadership post in the party if the nomination were to be decided by insiders rather than the broader group of Democratic voters who have turned out in huge numbers.

Brazile, while pleased that the competitive race has invigorated the party, said Friday she was "deeply worried about our ability to ensure that this is a very smooth process."

The anxiety has risen in the wake of Tuesday's coast-to-coast primaries and caucuses, which left Obama and Clinton nearly even in the delegate count — leaving strategists in both campaigns to conclude that neither was likely to win the needed 2,025 delegates even after primary and caucus voting ends this summer.

Republicans, meanwhile, have all but crowned a nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Now some Democrats are fretting that the GOP can prepare for the general election while Clinton and Obama wage a bitter and personal war for delegates that would end in a swirl of controversy.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean sought this week to calm those fears, predicting that the party would likely know its nominee by the spring — even if it requires some sort of deal between Clinton and Obama.

"The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race (in November), I think, is not a good scenario," he told the television station NY1 on Tuesday. "I think we will have a nominee sometime in the middle of March or April. But if we don't, then we're going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement. Because I don't think we can afford to have a brokered convention."

Florida and Michigan together account for 366 pledged delegates and superdelegates.

But at the moment the DNC is refusing to seat the delegations because both states held primary elections earlier than the official party calendar allowed.

With the delegate race so close, the dispute over Florida and Michigan has emerged as a point of contention between Clinton and Obama. Clinton, who won the votes in both states, is demanding that the delegates be counted. Obama disagrees, noting that his name did not appear on the Michigan ballot nor did he officially campaign in Florida.

Florida officials said they were especially loathe to put aside the Jan. 29 primary results, given that more than 1.7 million Democrats turned out that day and that Clinton and Obama appeared on the ballot.

"You can't undo an election with a caucus where you would be switching 1.7 million private ballots with maybe as many as 50,000 attending a caucus," said Nelson, who has endorsed Clinton. "That just is not going to work, especially in a state that is so sensitive about having the right to vote and having it count as intended."

Another senior Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, issued a similar statement Friday, noting that 600,000 Democrats voted in that state's primary and that it "would not be practical or fair to throw out the results of that election."

Adding to the friction is the role that so-called superdelegates are entitled to play at the party's national convention in Denver, set for August.

Both campaigns are now focusing intensely on those 796 insiders — members of Congress, governors, state party chairs and DNC members from each state — who could play kingmaker at a competitive convention. Those superdelegates are free to vote for a candidate of their choice, regardless of the outcome of nomination contests in their states.

The superdelegate process appears to benefit Clinton, with her family's long-standing political connections. According to an Associated Press count, she leads among declared superdelegates, 213-140 — a lead that includes the vote of her own husband, former President Clinton, who gets a vote as a "distinguished party leader."

The tradition of superdelegates was adopted in the 1980s as party leaders and elected officials looked for ways to maintain their influence over a national convention. DNC officials on Friday defended the practice, arguing that many of the superdelegates are grass-roots activists.

But the closely fought contest between Clinton and Obama is making some superdelegates uneasy. Some do not relish the idea of deciding the nominee, even after millions of Americans have already voted.