February 16, 2008 -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the Democratic "superdelegates" should follow the will of the people in their states if they end up breaking the tie in the nomination battle - a position that dovetails with that of Barack Obama.
Pelosi, in an interview with Bloomberg TV's Al Hunt that airs today, also backed Obama's position that delegates from Florida and Michigan shouldn't be seated at the convention.
Her surprising comments came as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign has said it expects the tight contest for the nomination to be settled by the roughly 800 "supers" - elected officials and party bigshots who cast votes at the August convention in Denver.
Pelosi, who hasn't endorsed either candidate, said, "I think there is a concern when the public speaks and there is a counter-decision made to that . . . I don't think that will happen. It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided."
Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the speaker meant that if one candidate has a clear lead in delegates amassed through the primaries, then the superdelegates shouldn't undermine it.
Clinton booster Bob Kerrey, a former US senator who now heads the New School, agreed with Pelosi's position about the Michigan and Florida contests. He recently told the Villager newspaper: "You don't change the rules in the middle of the game. Period."
"No new vote and no new caucuses, either," Kerrey added last week. "Just stick to the rules that they agreed to."
The delegate contest is close, with Obama leading by less than 100, according to RealClearPolitics.com.
At the same time, prominent South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn said he disagrees, and the "supers" should have free will.
Pelosi also told Hunt that the 313 combined delegates from Florida and Michigan - which were stripped of convention delegates as punishment for moving up their primaries - shouldn't be seated.
"I don't think that any states that operated outside the rules of the party can be dispositive of who the nominee is," she said. "That is to say, they can't make the difference, because then we would have no rules."
Pelosi said she hoped there would be a clear winner before the convention. "We certainly don't want to ignore Florida and Michigan, but we can't ignore the rules which everyone else played by," she said.
Clinton spokesman Jay Carson argued, "We believe the votes of the hundreds of thousands of people who turned out in Florida and Michigan matter, and we will work to make sure that the delegates they elected are seated."
Clinton won the vote in both states, although Obama had taken his name off the ballot in Michigan.
