Democratic National Committee

Decision day looms this week for undeclared superdelegates from Maryland and other states, whose fence-straddling could end soon and help close out the protracted Democratic selection process. Final presidential primaries will be held tomorrow in South Dakota and Montana, and pressure is building for remaining superdelegates to announce their choice of a candidate. Many are expected do so within hours or days, effectively delivering the Democratic nomination to Sen. Barack Obama. In Maryland, that means that several high-ranking political officials, including Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, could finally make their intentions known.

The vote was once denied to women. It was denied to blacks. It was denied to those without land. And today, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm tell us, it is being denied to their people. The Democratic and Republican parties are depriving them of delegates to the nominating conventions because they held their primaries too early, and the governors are horrified at this treatment. "The right to vote is at the very foundation of our democracy," they said in a statement.

It's no picnic being a superdelegate for the Democratic Party in 2008. Just ask Mary Jo Neville. The Dayton resident is a Democratic National Committee member and an at-large superdelegate, one of a group of 796 individuals who will play a key role in picking the party's presidential nominee while trying to avoid an angry party split between the rival camps of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Superdelegates are not pledged to a specific candidate at the national convention this summer.

The 2008 primaries have quickly shaped up as the most interesting in recent memory. Both parties' races are so tight and in flux that there is a chance in each party that no candidate will have captured enough votes to secure the nomination before the convention rolls around. This may be a far greater danger for the Democrats, because of a rule enacted by previous party leaders aimed at maintaining control over their presidential choice. In 2008, the result may be a Democratic convention choosing a nominee who lacks the legitimacy of being the "people's choice."

CHICAGO -- If you listen to the latest soundings on any given day, you might wonder if you had just awakened from a coma that caused you to miss the 2008 presidential election. Plenty of forecasters have been eager to declare a winner before the opening gun. This is particularly true on the Democratic side, where Hillary Rodham Clinton is regularly advised to dispense with campaigning and start looking at fabric swatches for the Oval Office drapes. Said a former aide to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, "If this were a wedding, we'd be at the `speak now or forever hold your peace' part."

LOS ANGELES -- With a swipe of his pen, some flowery remarks and a good backdrop, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger moved California's presidential primary yesterday - to February 2008 from June - placing the nation's most populous state at the increasingly congested front end of the primary calendar. Speaking outside the Stanford Mansion in Sacramento - the site of the first presidential visit to California, by Rutherford B. Hayes, in 1880 - Schwarzenegger, a Republican, noted that presidential candidates had already come to the state to woo voters as the new primary date was being talked about.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barack Obama confessed to feeling like an American Idol or Survivor contestant when he shared a stage with nine other presidential contenders at a Democratic Party gathering that ended yesterday. None of the candidates made it to Hollywood or got voted off the island. Democrats interviewed afterward said the meeting, in effect the first audition of the 2008 contest, signaled a much more competitive contest than the early polls, which gave Hillary Rodham Clinton a big lead.

DENVER -- The Democratic National Committee announced yesterday that it will hold its 2008 convention in Denver to showcase the party's expansion into the once reliably Republican terrain of the Rocky Mountain West. DNC Chairman Howard Dean said that symbolism is what pushed Denver's bid ahead of its competition, perennial convention candidate New York. "It's fitting that the next president of the United States will be nominated in Denver," Dean said in a conference call. "If we win the West, we will win the presidency."

ARLINGTON, Va. -- And now for the definition-impaired, the meaning of the word naive: "deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment." There was plenty of that on display last week in Pittsburgh and Washington. At the annual National Conference of Editorial Writers Convention in Pittsburgh, Edward G. Rendell, Pennsylvania governor and former general chairman of the Democratic National Committee, addressed a group of pundits on the subject, "Will the Real Democratic Party Please Stand Up?"

CHICAGO -- Less than three months before the midterm congressional elections, members of the Democratic National Committee approved a new 2008 presidential nominating calendar yesterday and left Chicago vowing to win back control of Congress this fall. In the first major restructuring of the presidential nominating process in a generation, the DNC agreed to insert Nevada between Iowa and New Hampshire at the start of the nominating season, closely followed by a South Carolina primary. The changes are meant to give African-Americans and Hispanics a bigger voice in the selection of the Democratic nominee, while also better reflecting the importance of the South and West in the Electoral College.