superdelegates

The big action in Congress this week was on bills with big price tags: the $290 billion Farm Bill and a new $300 billion housing crisis bill. It also passed a law banning employers and insurers from using your genes to discriminate against you. And, of course, the race for Democratic superdelegates continues between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, with both picking up several endorsements.

The 2007 Farm Bill looks like it might be ready for a final vote as the House and Senate negotiate between themselves and with President Bush to find a bill that hits all the right political constituencies and has the right price tag. The latest version of the bill, which at $290 billion over ten years is $10 billion over the congressional budget rules and $4.5 billion more than President Bush wants, contains most of the usual subsidies and conversation programs of years past but adds several key provisions. Bush is pressing Congress to lower the income limits on farmers who can receive subsidies from the current $1.95 million to $200,000, well short of Congress' currently proposed $500,000. But Bush also supports keeping $5.2 billion in direct subsidy payments to farmers despite record crop prices, so he's not exactly uniformly thrifty. Also included in the current version of the bill is a $5 billion trust fund for farmers hit by disasters including floods, droughts and fires, a key demand of farm state Democrats and Republicans alike.

However, Bush has taken a hard line on the total price tag for the bill, and has raised a veto threat that Democrats say may be designed to bolster Sen. John McCain's anti-spending credentials. While it remains to see who will blink first, the extension that funds the farm programs is running out and some type of vote is imminent in the next week or two.

For more on this week's legislation and an update on Superdelegate endorsements, click through

By Avelino Maestas

As more and more states hold their primary elections and caucuses in the Democratic presidential nominating contest, we’ve seen the importance of superdelegates grow. These individuals will undoubtedly help decide the nomination, and they’re now the focus of intense scrutiny: for who will the vote, and why?

Since we joined with our partners to begin the Superdelegate Transparency Project, we’ve seen a number of proposals on how superdelegates can follow the “will of the people.” DemConWatch characterizes one group of supers who will vote for the “pledged delegate leader” the Pelosi Club, after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Representatives of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign have said she would lead in the popular vote by the time the August convention roles around, implying she would have the most legitimate support.

And while DNC rules give superdelegates unlimited freedom to vote their conscience, at least two supers are appealing directly to their constituency: college students. Lauren Wolfe and Awais Khaleel, president and vice-president (respectively) of the College Democrats of America, have recorded a YouTube video seeking direction in how they should vote:

The Superdelegate Transparency Project on Congresspedia is picking up steam as it looks more and more likely that the superdelegates will decide the Democratic presidential nominee. Our citizen journalist-generated list of superdelegates is being covered by everyone from the New York Times to CNN (video link).

But as the pressure on them picks up, many superdelegates are switching sides or hedging their bets. We need your help to figure out who these "wobbling" superdelegates are.

The staff editors at Congresspedia have created full instructions so that finding these wobblers can take as little as five minutes - no experience is necessary. Come join your fellow citizens in this vital piece of research.

Get this widget for
your blog or website.The motley crew of citizen journalists, activists, bloggers and transparency advocates that make up the Superdelegate Transparency Project (STP) have produced the best, most transparent and highly detailed reporting on the Democratic superdelegates - anywhere. Through collaborative research with nearly 300 citizen journalists, the folks at DemConWatch, LiteraryOutpost, the HuffPost's OffTheBus project, OpenLeft and CMD's Congresspedia have produced a tally that rivals or bests those of the major media outlets. The STP even breaks the numbers down by state and congressional district with ever-expanding bios of hundreds of superdelegates AND we now have a wicked-cool live-updating widget.

With Hillary Clinton within stalemate distance of Barack Obama, the so-called "superdelegates" to the Democratic convention could very well decide the nominee and are an increasingly controversial part of the nominating process. While the members of the STP all came to the project with different opinions on who the best nominee should be or even what voting philosophy superdelegates should follow, we united around the common cause of bringing enough of this process into the light that voters could know just who was representing them at the convention and to decide for themselves what action, if any, they wanted to take.

Today we took the Pepsi Challenge with the websites of some of the biggest major news organizations and found that our citizen-journalist-produced research could stand up to any one of them (see chart below). No one with any sense thinks that citizen journalism can or will ever fully replace that of the professionals, but a massive research project like this needed massive participation and it is particularly poetic that it took regular citizens, cooperating in an open and transparent manner to make this information public.