Will Democrats Have to Cut a Deal for Nomination?

From The Wall Street Journal:

It is increasingly looking like next week's Super Tuesday primaries won't produce a Democratic front-runner. So then what?

The Democratic nomination isn't likely to be settled on the floor of this summer's convention, political experts say. But that doesn't mean that a nomination brokered by party leaders is impossible -- or that things won't get even nastier.

[If the two candidates go into the Democratic National Convention with 40% of the delegates each] the loyalty of the candidates' pledged delegates, the intentions of hundreds of currently unpledged "superdelegates," the negotiating skill of party leaders and the outcome of a dispute over whether to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan each could prove decisive.

The stage for a negotiated outcome could be set if neither Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York nor Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois emerges as a clear winner from the primaries that begin Tuesday and continue into June.

In one possible scenario, one of the candidates might win the majority of delegates in some big states while the other could win the most delegates in a lot of smaller states with about the same number of popular votes. Even though neither candidate would have piled up enough delegates to sew up the nomination, both could claim front-runner status.

The last time the Democrats held a seriously contested convention was in 1952, when Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson was nominated on the third ballot to run against Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.

The superdelegates account for 20% of the convention votes and include members of Congress and other party bigwigs. Superdelegates aren't committed to a candidate, but they normally vote for the candidate who won their state's primary.

If neither Mr. Obama nor Mrs. Clinton can knock out the other in the primaries, the superdelegates -- perhaps led by House and Senate leaders -- could begin pointedly siding with one candidate . . . . Acting individually or in some coordinated way, the superdelegates could "make it clear to the second candidate that [he or she is] not going to win," adds Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist.

Florida and Michigan broke party rules by holding early primaries, and the party has sanctioned them by taking away their delegate votes. Mrs. Clinton, who won those primaries, has said she would seat the delegates. They could clinch the nomination for her, but she may lack the power to seat them if she has less than a majority of convention votes.

If the nomination comes down to a difference of a few votes, the candidates also could try to lure away one another's elected delegates, and will battle for the 26 delegates pledged to former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who suspended his campaign. The Web site RealClearPolitics.com calculates that Mr. Obama has 63 elected delegates of the 2,025 total delegates needed to win the nomination, while Mrs. Clinton has 48.

Elected delegates are bound to their candidate by state laws in some cases, but party rules allow them to vote their conscience, says Mr. Devine, the Democratic strategist.

All that raises the possibility of the supporters of the losing candidate arriving in Denver unhappy and unreconciled with the winner. The chaotic 1968 Democratic convention, where angry supporters of Eugene McCarthy took to the streets, contributed to Hubert Humphrey's loss to Richard Nixon.

"At some point, the nomination would become worthless" if it means a divided party couldn't win in November, says Mr. Sabato.