Across the pond

One of the best pieces I have read about the US election has just been posted by Gary Younge, who reports from the US for The Guardian. He argues that the race for the Democratic nomination is now almost certain to be decided by the party’s senior insiders.

The elections we have all been watching account for 80% of the total voting delegates who will nominate the candidate. The remaining 20% goes to “superdelegates” – Democratic legislators, governors, former presidents and vice-presidents, and other party officials.

At present, Barack Obama is winning by a narrow margin. By most calculations, voters have given him around 133 more elected delegates than Hillary Clinton – a mere one-eighth of the total in states yet to vote.

Younge writes that while it is much too soon to write off Hillary Clinton the likelihood is that Obama will end up with a majority of the votes cast. But because most of the superdelegates are supporting Clinton, she could still end up with a majority of delegates, who according to Democratic Party rules. The question Younge asks is whether the US can continue to claim it is  a true democracy if the superdelages use their voting power to contradict the popular will. Over the weekend some of the African American superdelegates switched their votes from Clinton to Obama.

But there are not many black superdelegates and it is by no means certain that the majority of the Democratic Party insiders will move from their loyalty to the Clinton clan.

There are very few black reporters in mainstream British journalism and Younge is the only one that I can think of who is reporting on US politics in this election. Gary Younge learnt the trade on the postgraduate course at City University’s Department of Journalism. A few years later he won the Laurence Stern Fellowship, which enables a young British journalist to work on the national desk of the Washington Post for three months. During that stint Gary not only learnt a lot about American politics and American journalism, he met the lady who is now his wife.

So this blog is also an advert for the Fellowship. There are still just over three weeks before the deadline. Applicants should write to Anna McKane at the Department of Journalism at City University. The winner will be chosen by Len Downie, the executive editor of the Washington Post, in early April.