I don’t have a ton I want to talk about tonight, but I did discover a piece of information earlier today that’s relevant to yesterday’s post and the Biden conversation in general. It occurred to me that we haven’t heard any talk about superdelegates during this primary. Now, on one hand, I wouldn’t expect to hear much about them, on account of there’s only one credible candidate and he’s the incumbent. But the fact that I hadn’t heard anything was interesting.

Well, it turns out the rules changed in 2020, mostly, I assume, because of the vast amount of bitching from Certain Parties in the last several elections about the superdelegates. So here’s how this works: I was correct about the pledged delegates. There’s just under 4,000 of them total and Biden needs a majority of them (which he already has) to be nominated for the Presidency on the first ballot.

On the first ballot.

This is the bit I didn’t know: there are superdelegates this year– 739 of them, to be exact, and technically they’re called “automatic delegates” now, but everyone knows they’re superdelegates– mostly, if you don’t know, elected Democratic officials and Party People. The automatic delegates do not get to vote on the first ballot. But if there isn’t a nominee after the first ballot? They can, which means the total number of delegates increases, which means the number of delegates needed for the nomination also increases.

I pointed out yesterday that even if an unwilling-to-leave Biden didn’t win on the first ballot, the pressure campaign on anyone who voted against him to change their vote in Round 2 would be extreme, particularly if he only missed the majority by a few votes. And to be honest, I feel like the sudden injection of hundreds of superdelegates probably works in the sitting president’s favor, meaning if he didn’t win on the first ballot, he’d likely win on the second. This is a big fucking question mark, though, especially for any scenario where Biden does decide to drop out and not immediately anoint a successor.

I promise, unless something staggeringly interesting happens tonight (Jesus please no) I’ll talk about video games or books or something tomorrow.