The point I’ve been making doesn’t really rest on how long the word ‘superdelegate’ has been in the language. I should have looked it up just for historical curiosity and spent the time Mr. Zimmer did to protect my argument against understandable comments like these and his. However, I remain convinced that my point is stands firm.

Mr. Zimmer now has published a time-line of the word ‘superdelegate’ showing a quantum leap in usage this year–very close to my claim that it only appeared this year. However, he interprets this as simply a reflection of the tightness of the race this year. But that does not explain the choice of the word ‘superdelegate’ over neutral terms like ‘unpledged delegate’. My point, remember, is that this choice of words is not coincidental.

This year the word has been used in the media in one connection only: the fear that ‘superdelegates’ would override the ‘will of the people’ as expressed in the primaries and caucuses. (Google ‘superdelegates will of the people’ to see what I mean.) This leaves the impression that ‘superdelegates’ are somehow more powerful, that their votes count more than those of pledged delegates. Moreover, it is a threat to the ‘will of the people’, something we seem still to hold sacred despite the aftermath of the 2004 election.

My question is this: why does the current US media use this extraordinarily misleading term ‘superdelegate’ rather than the neutral and perfectly accurate term ‘unpledged delegate’? Do they do this totally innocent of the analogies with ‘superman’ and ‘man’ and ‘superhuman’ and ‘human’? Is it simply because the word is sexy and ‘cool sounding’, as some of my critics have claimed? ‘Sexy’ in what sense? Why does it sound so exceptionally cool in 2008 when it hasn’t since 1983?

This word is obviously pejorative and subtlely condemnatory in comparison to ‘unpledge delegates’, making it more important this year because it is weighted in precisely the same way as reflected in the CMPA media project: pro-Obama, the media’s choice, anti-Clinton, the threat to the will of the people. The people, as best I can tell, seem evenly divided on the issue.

Not very persuasive. And it’s more of a political analysis (kinda shallow one at that) than a linguistic one.

The real answer is because it’s a cool sounding word and the difference between pledged and unpledged delegates is confusing to the average reader/viewer/listener — or was confusing, as of a few months ago. So the media found the shortest, sexiest sound bite that describes the inner workings of the delegate system and ran with it.

You know, a lie doesn’t become true just because you say it twice.
Read http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=192 which was written by someone who actually does some work, as opposed to people like you who think that any random thought you have is true because you thought of it.

Or the next year, when George McGovern wrote (The Nation, 5/15/82, p. 581, bottom of c.1 – top of c.2):
Two thirds of them — approximately 550 — will be “super delegates” uncommitted to any candidate.

Next you will complain about this coiner of trash, Samuel Johnson.