Democrats to choose ‘by end of June’

FT reported The Democratic party’s “superdelegates” have every right to overturn the popular vote and choose the candidate they believe would be best equipped to defeat John McCain in a general election, according to Howard Dean, chairman of the US Democratic National Committee.

But if they do, he wants them to do it before the convention, so the reaction to the vote will not dominate the television coverage.

Mr Dean, who was a presidential candidate in 2004 and is a former governor of Vermont, spoke to the Financial Times just two days after Hillary Clinton put her campaign back in contention with a near double-digit margin of victory over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary. He said there was nothing in the DNC’s rules that would prevent the party’s unelected superdelegates, who make up about a fifth of the overall delegate tally and who will ultimately pick the winner, from “doing what they want”.

But what he forgets is that even if they pick a winner by the end of June, the other side can do everything they can to tear down that choice, in the hope that some of them will change their votes before the convention, and if they do, and if the convention elects someone other than the "end of June" choice, things will really explode at the convention.