Seems almost everyone is critical of the idea of the super-delegate. I was under the impression that the purpose of the super-delegate was that they could act as a bulwark against the passing popular enthusiasms of the vast unwashed. Both parties used to choose candidates in the smoke-filled room and only later let the public choose in primaries with super-delegates. If the Republicans had not done away with the super-delegate some time ago, would they not have stopped Trump in his tracks?
I suppose doing away with the smoke-filled room and the super-delegate made it all more “democratic” but I think there is such a thing as too much democracy and maybe the Republican party will realize the truth of this sooner than they think.
I haven’t studied the details, but I find nothing wrong with the concept. There are people who have worked their entire lives to build and support the Democratic Party. I think it’s entirely fair that they should have at least as much say about their party’s nominee as some college kid who hasn’t even looked at the issues in any depth, let alone a Trump supporter who is just trying to sabotage Hillary.
Another concern was that a candidate could win lots of votes through March, only to have a scandal take him down in April. Superdelegates and a collapse in support in California could wrest the nomination from a losing and insufficiently vetted candidate.
The notion that all the major elected representatives of a Party shouldn’t have any say in the selection of its Presidential candidate is totally insane, but something I have come to expect from a nation that denies global climate change, thinks the government is going to grab guns, expects high-paying, life-long manufacturing jobs to return, and tolerates libertarians.
Democrats may remember Lyndon LaRouche, who held views that didn’t overlap with actual Democratic views and values at all, but who ran (and his disciples ran, in local elections) as a Democrat.
Superdelegates came about, in part, because of loose cannons like that.
“Too much direct democracy” was a real and legitimate fear of the Founders and remains a problem today. You see it every time there is a referendum and voters get to micromanage policy on specific issues. The winning position is almost always either the one that results in lower taxes or the one that has been the most relentlessly promoted in the media. There’s almost no correlation with wise and forward-thinking policy. That’s how public infrastructure crumbles and states get driven to near-bankruptcy. It’s also why one of the Kardashians or some other reality show moron mostly famous for being famous might do surprisingly well in a run for president despite having the intelligence of a sack of fertilizer.
With predictable results. They have hated their front-runner every step of the way, and now they look like cheap whores when they support him. Rubio looks especially pathetic, and Christie is now a national joke.
That would sound a lot more principled if Sanders supporters weren’t currently arguing that the superdelegates should ignore the fact that more people voted for Clinton in the primaries and switch their votes to Sanders.
Well, yes, you might end up with some reality-show idiot with an orange marmoset on his head combining his vapid reality-show fame with racist demagoguery and becoming the presumptive Republican nominee for president. That goes without saying.
If you want a minority of the people selecting our presidents then certainly we should continue this system. The insanity here is the belief that corrupt political parties producing mediocre candidates will lead us anywhere but downhill, the way it has for over 3 decades now. So a year from now when you’re all back to complaining about taxes and war and wondering what those idiots in Washington will do next, all because you got always got picked last and fear competition, then don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.
And Hillary was a class act last night, thanking Bernie for fighting the good fight, and helping the Democratic party through vigorous debate. Too bad her fan boys don’t have that much class.
I think you’ll find that many people think the primary system is a big, absurd mess, and that there are better ways to run elections than the party primary -> general election paradigm in place in most of the U.S. I mean, the idea of having an election before the election is bad enough on its own. Throw in the essentially random order in which states have primaries, or that some states have caucuses, or both. And that they all have different rules about how delegates are awarded. And also consider the outsize influence extremist groups can have on the process (cf. Akin, Todd; Angle, Sharron; Mourdock, Richard; O’Donnell, Christine). What do you get? A big honkin’ mess.
Getting rid of superdelegates will change diddly-squat about this fundamental problem. It fixes an imaginary problem while ignoring the real one. Which, to be fair, is the way American governance works nine times out of ten, so it would fit the general pattern, but still.
Of course it needs far more than that. Which is no reason to justify the use of the superdelegates.
In case anyone hasn’t heard the horseshit explanation offered by the Democratic Party for superdelegates:
They claim the reason for them is that ordinary party members wouldn’t have to run for the delegate positions against well known office holders, so they say it’s a fairer system to give all the party office holders and officials automatic status as delegates. Maybe Hillary’s fans who never got over being unpopular in high school fall for that story but it’s really to make the primaries pointless and leave control of the nomination in the hands of the party establishment, locking out not only the independent vote but the majority of the party itself.
How about dumping the supremely undemocratic caucus system? Let real people cast their votes instead of letting the few with lots of free time get together to pick the nominee. (While they reminisce about being The Cool Kids in high school.)