It looks like we may be headed for a contested convention. Let’s say we get to the end of the primary season and the delegate numbers look like this:
40% Bernie
22% Biden
20% Warren
Bloomberg, Pete, and Amy sharing the rest with lower %
They have to give it to Bernie then, right? Even if the superdelegates could technically unite and make Warren or Biden the nominee… people would go nuts.
I could see the DNC’s logic though in NOT giving it to Bernie. “Not a real democrat” and didn’t earn enough delegates to win our primary. But I imagine the Bernie people would be WAY more motivated to say screw this and not vote in November. You think the Berniebros were a problem for Hillary? This would be a whole new level of ugly.
This would be tough because Warren is generally regarded to be in Bernie’s “lane” - the progressives - so they could argue that the progressive wing is the majority and should prevail. In this situation, I’d argue the DNC should just let the superdelegates have at it and let the chips fall where they may. If they go with Bernie, so be it, if they deny it, well, three months is still a long time to unite the party before Election Day in November.
I think Bernie would be the only chance to win the general in this scenario. Take it from Bernie and you’d have a revolt. A huge chunk of his voters would be so furious they wouldn’t vote for whoever got it. Sucks that so many would feel that way, but that’s what I think would happen.
The DNC is the superdelegates, or most of them anyway. And practically all the rest are Dem Senators, Representatives, and governors. Also still-living Dem ex-Presidents and Veeps. (I have no idea whether Biden has to choose between being a candidate and a superdelegate, or whether he can vote for himself on the second ballot. :))
If the Bernie fans were ticked off in 2016 it will be 10x worse if he has the most delegates and someone else is picked. That’s a dream scenario for Trump.
I see Warren withdrawing at that point, freeing her delegates to vote for whomever they want - and I suspect that just enough of them would vote for Bernie to give him a majority, even with the superdelegates. I especially see this as I don’t expect the party to want this to go past a second ballot.
In fact, if it’s 40-22-20, I wouldn’t be surprised if the party talks Warren into withdrawing before the first ballot, as even a second ballot makes the party look weak - “How are we expected to run the country if we can’t even agree on who should do it?”
Why not? He has to balance Sanders voting for himself on the second ballot…
And the only superdelegates you left out are (a) the mayor of Washington, DC (since DC is treated as a state, the mayor is treated as a state governor), (b) any former Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, and (c) any former DNC chairs.
The DNC (Democratic National Committee) does not select the nominee. The other DNC (Democratic National Convention) can obscure the meaning
The DNC, committee, does have a key role in establishing the rules for delegate selection to the national convention. They also are part of establishing the rules for how the convention works. Both roles are also affected by what the delegates to the last convention voted for; they are not there merely to vote for the nominee.
The convention itself is a fine example of representative democracy in action. Voters chose candidates who earned the right to select who they wanted to be their delegates. Those pledged delegates along with the unpledged delegates that are party leaders named in the rules will ultimately select the candidate in a contested convention.
IMO the DNC as a body should do nothing to intervene in that process to force a specific outcome. The convention should do what the delegates decide they should do.
There is a real chance given the large field going into Super Tuesday that 40% of delegates could be based on a third or less of total primary votes. Still feel so sure that the plurality is strong enough to ignore the wishes of two thirds of Democratic voters?
What we? I won’t be a delegate. If I were, I would likely view representing the voters who sent me to the convention as trying to pick a candidate closest to the politics of the one I was pledged to support.
Overwhelmingly, delegates get picked by single preference. Only some of the caucuses have a ranked choice component involved. A contested convention is a ranked choice problem. The delegates have to do that ranking. Both voting for the plurality winner or trying to pick a closest fit that can get a majority seem like perfectly reasonable strategies for delegates to pursue.
I have a preference in what the process produces. That does not mean I don’t value the messiness of representative democracy more than the specific outcome.
What we? I won’t be a delegate. If I were, I would likely view representing the voters who sent me to the convention as trying to pick a candidate closest to the politics of the one I was pledged to support.
Overwhelmingly, delegates get picked by single preference. Only some of the caucuses have a ranked choice component involved. A contested convention is a ranked choice problem. The delegates have to do that ranking. Both voting for the plurality winner or trying to pick a closest fit that can get a majority seem like perfectly reasonable strategies for delegates to pursue.
I have a preference in what the process produces. That does not mean I don’t value the messiness of representative democracy more than the specific outcome.
We as in the royal we as in the Democratic Party. Just counterpointing to the face that somehow picking Sanders is overriding the majority of voters. Picking ANY candidate will overriding the majority of voters.
I absolutely agree, and I say this as someone who’s not sold on Bernie’s “electability” at all.
But, it’s also possible that Trump’s approval ratings go down the drain, and if that happens, I think Bernie’s actually better positioned to capitalize on that than any of the current candidates.
Bernie is going to win the total vote count by several million voters. To take that away from his grass roots organization and just give the nomination to someone else is going to enrage Sanders’ supporters so much that they’ll never ever forgive the Democratic party. It would potentially destroy the party forever.
Now if Bernie tanks on Super Tuesday, that’s another conversation. But short of that, the Dems have to accept that Bernie’s the likely nominee, and they need to force him to put someone on the ticket who has broad appeal - and if he doesn’t, then maybe they can use delegates as leverage.
All delegates are released after the first ballot.
That means that after the first ballot, everyone can vote for Warren. Why would she release her delegates? If the DNC felt pressure to nominate a progressive, why would Bernie they accede to bernie bros over Warren?
The superdelegates (governors, Congresscritters, all of 'em) shuld follow the lead of the majority of the pledged delegates on second vote and beyond. My WAG is that in this case the released pledged delegates would very quickly have a majority of them going to Sanders on the second or third vote, and the superdelegates would pile on to make that delegate majority a resounding one.
There should be no inviolate requirement that such happens.
"Dems are the rules. It is not “fair” to be changing rules of the game at this stage. IIRC, this was also the case in 2016. Don’t be going banana republic and shaving the dice at this stage of the game based on the candidate makeup.
This is akin to the electoral college. IMHO the electoral college as asinine and has led to the tyranny of sparsely populated states dictating to the republic. But if you’re going to change either the electoral college or the democratic super delegates, do it in 2021 so that the guard rails are firmly in place.
I think the exact scenario posited by the OP is unlikely, because I doubt Bernie and Liz could get 60% between them. If it happened, my guess is that Warren would see if everyone else would agree to support her over Bernie and if so she would be nominated on the first ballot, and if not she would release her delegates in the second round and Bernie would be nominated. If a majority of pledged delegates were voting for Bernie in the second round and the superdelegates overruled them, yeah, welcome to Trump’s second term.
I don’t think that if Warren were nominated with 60% of the vote, Bernie would have cause to complain.
I would say that the point at which one “deserves” the nomination with a plurality is around 45% of pledged delegates with nobody else over 25%. If a candidate were to be denied the nomination under those circumstances, hard feelings would certainly ensue.