Democratic superdelagates didn’t back Sanders because they knew him. Knew him as a non-Democrat. Knew him as someone who has never worked to advance the party. Knew him as an avowed socialist who could be demagogued to death. Knew him as a guaranteed loser of the election.
So they were supposed to back him, why?
I’ve said it before, but here goes. A progressive movement would be great for the party. But only if it starts on the local level and works up from the bottom, and not if it falls on the party from above.
Bernie Bros. If you’re even 1% real, get out and work the streets and elect progressives until they are a majority of the party leaders. Otherwise, STFU you poseurs.
No, they didn’t taint the nomination, but the inclusion of the superdelegate numbers in news reporting gave Clinton an appearance of inevitability that almost certainly affected voting throughout the primary season.
I think Sanders has a point when he complains about the networks mixing pledged and superdelegate counts in reporting, particularly early on. In a sense, doing so is like mixing polling data from primaries yet to be held with data from concluded voting, and presenting it all as actual results. Later, I think they made more effort to explain what that combined number represented, and to separate them out more often, probably due to Sanders’ repeated complaints.
Making it appear that Clinton had a large lead so early on is one thing that probably did affect voters choices. It could be argued that this is a good thing, allowing party leadership to guide the voters selection. To me, though, it seems a little undemocratic, ironically so, for the Democratic Party.
Short of eliminating superdelegates, which the nomination of Trump amply demonstrates could be a very bad idea, I’m not sure what could be done to improve the process. It’s not practical to ask the media not to report on likely superdelegates, and asking them to stop combining everything into a single metric is probably a lost cause. It would be nice if superdelegates could be prohibited from voicing support at least until their state has voted, but given who they are, it would be tremendously unfair to put restrictions on their participation in the debate during the primary season.
It may not be a perfect process, but I guess I don’t really have any great ideas for making it better.
I don’t think they taint the nomination at all. Republicans wish they had superdelegates now, it might have saved them from the ignoramus they’re going to nominate. The president is not only an elective office, it is the leadership of the party. If you want to lead the Democratic Party, then it helps to identify early in life as a Democrat, support and campaign for Democrats, and raise money for fellow Democrats. Hillary did all these things, Sanders did none of them. That has to count for something. The superdelegates themselves deserve an independent vote in the process, they have much more invested in the party than the average guy in the street, they should have their own say.
I’ve never paid that much attention to the primary process because until now I’ve never been that invested in one candidate over another.
I learned pretty quickly during this process all sorts of things about how primaries work. And how, despite the fact that votes are involved, they have little to do with ‘fair’ representation of the people’s will.
However, this is by design. (Of course, the illusion of a democratic process is also by design). It’s not ‘wrong’ or ‘right,’ but it is a system by which a political party chooses its nominee. They could do it by consulting tea leaves if they wanted to.
If this electoral season has done nothing but wake some people up to how this process works, then I’d say that’s a good thing. Party nominees are nominated only kinda-sorta because anyone bothered to vote for them, and the losers are not ‘cheated’ out of anything, because there was never actually a promise of the popular vote being a deciding factor.
I would hope that everybody involved can admit that what we have is a problematic situation that might be in need of some simplification; the numerous ways votes/delegates/superdelegates are counted and reported on makes building any kind of consensus narrative difficult, and building consensus should be the goal of the party leading up to the convention and beyond. Maybe it worked in the past, but with instant 24/7 news cycles and the power of social media, I don’t think that the way the parties pick candidates is going to work going forward into the 21st century.
I think it’s a mistake to have open primaries where independent people can vote for a candidate. The candidate for a party should reflect the ideals of the party and should be selected by party members. If the primary is open or selected by the general population, it allows a popular candidate to win a party’s nomination regardless of how the candidate aligns with the party’s platform. The candidate should be picked by party insiders.
I don’t think the superdelegate count tainted the nomination. If anything, it may have given Bernie a little more support since his supporters may be more motivated to try to overcome the superdelegates.
The process appears tainted to the losers. Going in, the candidates knew what to expect. It’s not like reality TV where the producers throw in a new twist half way through the season.
I don’t think the psychology of “everyone want[s] to vote for a winner” is especially meaningful in presidential primary elections. I would expect the more prevalent effect of belief that the contest is wrapped up to be that less enthusiastic or busier supporters don’t turn out because it doesn’t matter, which I suspect helped Sanders in this particular race. Moreover, some Sanders voters were excited to vote even if they thought it didn’t matter (or maybe even because they thought it didn’t matter!) because they weren’t playing to win. They were voting to send a message.
But at the same time, if the candidate that the party selects does not appeal to independents, he or she will lose the election. Including independents in the primary process is the mechanism that the party uses to ensure that their nominee is one who can win.
The Democrats have adults in the room (elected officials - the so-called super delegates) and the Republicans hold primaries and then hold county and state conventions in which they choose any delegates they damned well please, even though such delegates prefer one candidate (Cruz) over the candidate who won the primary (Trump). IMO, that’s far worse than elected officials going.
I will say that the Democrats should allow winner take most delegates wherein the statewide winner gets a big number of delegates, but the winner in any Congressional District gets the delegates from that district. The GOP used that system in a number of states (NY and Wisconsin, for two) and it makes some sense. Having that system might shorten the process.
The smoke filled rooms nominated some pretty good people for the presidency - Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Wilson, Truman, Ike, and even Kennedy. The"pure" Democratic nominating process produced McGovern in 1972 and Carter in 1976. Was the “pure” process better? By 1992, if I recall what I read properly, the “super-delegate” process was in place.
Pretty much. Bernie wants a revolution, and you don’t get a revolution unless you overturn the existing order. The SDs are there, in part, to make sure that doesn’t happen. It would have been interesting to see what they would have done had Bernie got more popular votes, but HRC go more delegates (including the SDs). If they really thought Hillary had a better chance in November then they would be foolish to switch over to Bernie.
This is not a popularity contest. It’s a contest to ensure a win in November.
I’d wait to complain about the superdeligates overturning the will of the people until they actually overturn the will of the people. These guys aren’t stupid, they realize that if they end up nominating someone that most Democratic voters oppose its going to hurt the party. If Sanders was getting 55% of the popular vote you can be that a lot of them would switch allegiances, rather than have it look like the will of the people was overturned.
The only time they will go against the will of the people is in case where nominating the popular vote winner would do more damage to the party than being undemocratic (see this years Republicans). Suppose that out of a field of 22 Democratic candidates, Lyndon Laroche got 22% of the primary votes and 52% of the pledged delegates. Are you sure that you wouldn’t reconsider super delegates then?
Yes, this. The purpose of a political party (which is a private group) is to support and promote a particular platform. It is completely valid for them to create a system where they try and ensure that whoever they run as a candidate is the best person in their eyes even if other people disagree. If a bunch of people vote for some unelectable yahoo (speaking generally, not of Sanders) then it’s valid for the party – which is going to pour enormous resources into the race – to try and steer that towards someone they think is better.
Primary voting serves an important function is showing what the electorate is thinking and how they feel but I don’t think it’s wrong for the party to use that as “advisement” rather than simple majority rule.
What strikes me most is the disingenuousness of the whole Bernie super argument. There is literally no scenario under which he wins either the popular vote or the delegate count aside from his magically turning 70% of the supers to him or Hillary being indicted, neither of which has any more chance of happening than my waking up biologically female tomorrow. In fact, if by some bolt of lightning she were indicted, supers could actually save things by throwing the nomination to him if they thought he’d have a better chance of winning at that point.
I also find the whole “the media and supers stilted the election for Hillary” argument less than compelling. Bernie’s supporters are supposed to be the young, energized wing of the Dems, and no amount of argument was going to change their minds or stop them from voting. If anything Hillary would be hurt more by people who supposedly figured that it was over before it had actually ended and thus didn’t vote.
Superdelegates are sort of like the Royal Assent of the Democratic Party - technically they can be used as an override, but they’ll only keep this power so long as it’s never used. I have no doubt that if Sanders had pulled ahead of Clinton in pledged delegates / popular vote that the supers would have duly changed allegiance, just as they did in 2008 when they shifted to support Obama after he won the nomination by those metrics.