Feb 11 2016

About those Super Delegates

Well, it’s true that they have 2 Super Powers.

First, they are not elected. They are Democratic elected officials and Officers of the Democratic Party. Yes, that’s almost as undemocratic as you can get unless, of course, they inherited that power.

Second, they are unbound. They can vote for any candidate they want, even if it’s against the results of their State Primary results. But that has consequences, I imagine someone who stubbornly supported Bernie in a solid Hillary District might at least expect some very embarrassing questions about it when they faced the voters in November.

And it’s a double edged sword in another way too. They are unbound. Whatever commitment they have made to a particular candidate, they can change their mind right on the Convention floor. What can the spurned candidate do? Piss up a rope and throw a tantrum that makes them look like a baby.

Boo Who?

Media outlets that pretend any different, that the Super Delegates can and should be counted in with the Regular Bound Delegate count, are simply displaying their bias (as if we didn’t know).

The Bernie super delegate panic is based on lazy reporting — here is what’s really going on in the DNC
Joshua Holland, Raw Story
11 Feb 2016 at 15:07 ET

As the Democrats head to Nevada, Bernie Sanders has 36 delegates, Hillary Clinton has 32, but you might not know that if you’ve been exposed to some lazy or sensational journalism suggesting that Clinton is in the lead.

Following the New Hampshire primary, a number of outlets reported that Clinton, rather than Sanders, was ahead in the delegate race because she had secured the backing of a number of Democratic super delegates – officeholders, party activists and officials who are not bound to vote for a candidate at the party’s convention in Philadelphia.
…
(P)eople only become super delegates because they have a longstanding affinity for, and loyalty toward the Democratic Party. Some may be total hacks, but they’re party hacks, and that makes them unlikely candidates to completely rip apart the Democratic coalition for a generation or two, which would be the only possible result of these unelected delegates overturning the will of primary voters. They share a common sense of duty to the best interests of the institution.

It is no doubt true that many of them feel a sense of loyalty to the Clintons. But it doesn’t follow that they’d effectively become political suicide bombers because of that loyalty. They want to beat the Republican nominee in November, and those who hold elected office also want to be re-elected. The worst way to accomplish either goal would be to create a massive scandal within the Democratic Party just months before the election. The super delegates aren’t going to destroy the party from within just because they prefer one candidate over the other.

It’s also true that many of the super delegates who endorsed Clinton did so because they believe that she’s the better candidate for the general election. But that view isn’t set in stone. If the unlikely scenario in which Sanders comes into the convention with more bound delegates but not enough to secure the nomination came to pass, something significant will have happened to shift the nature of the race between now and then. And whatever that something might be, the fact that Sanders was ahead would mean that many of those super delegates would no longer be confident that Hillary is the superior candidate. They’re not crazy. They’re party activists.
…
(U)ltimately, it’s the widespread expectation that the choice of nominee will reflect the will of the voters that makes a super delegate coup so unlikely. They can back whomever they want according to the party’s rules, but it would be a huge violation of the prevailing norms. And that’s why it’s the last thing voters should be worrying about.

rustymancuso581

2 comments

  1. Vent Hole

  2. David Dayen has an article on this topic over at New Republic

    Could Superdelegates Really Stop Bernie Sanders?

    The Democratic Party’s un-democratic nightmare is unlikely to unfold—but if it did, this summer’s convention could make Chicago 1968 look like a picnic.

    It was a good night on Tuesday for Hillary Clinton. She treaded water in the New Hampshire primary, coming out even with neighbor-state favorite son Bernie Sanders after her decisive win in Iowa. As the contest shifts to more diverse, and potentially friendlier, terrain, she is more than nine times closer to the nomination than Sanders.

    The above paragraph might read like something hastily written as a placeholder and accidentally published. But based on the rules of the Democratic nominating contest, it’s entirely true. Clinton extracted the same number of delegates from New Hampshire as Sanders, despite losing the popular vote by more than 21 points. She won 29 delegates in Iowa to Sanders’ 21, despite the virtual tie in the caucuses. And she leads in the delegate count 394-42, a deficit that will be difficult for Sanders to make up, since no Democratic primaries are winner-take-all, where he could rack up lots of delegates at once.

    How is this possible? The answer is superdelegates, the 712 votes doled out to Democratic National Committee officers, elected officials, and other party luminaries. The superdelegates are free to vote for their preferred nominee, unbound by the will of the voters—and if a nominee they think is terrible for the party is close to securing the nomination, they can conceivably throw their weight behind an alternative.

    Partisans for Clinton and President Obama both howled about superdelegates during the close 2008 primary, but they never went away. In fact, in candid moments, DNC officials would tell you that superdelegates were designed for precisely this year’s scenario: to cool the hot passions of voters—in this case Sanders voters—and tip the scales to a primary candidate perceived as more electable.

    The problem is that if the superdelegates actually followed through with coalescing behind Clinton to deny Sanders, it would make the 1968 Democratic Convention look like a garden party. Just think of the damage to the Democratic Party—which has made voting rights one of its major causes—if it blocked the candidate with the most delegates in primaries and caucuses from receiving the nomination. It would reinforce every conception of the corruption of the political establishment that has been a touchstone of Sanders’s campaign.

Comments have been disabled.