Back in 2016, this commentary was perhaps the first howl in the political wilderness against the unfairness of the Democratic Party’s use of “superdelegates” — office holders and party officials who by party rules automatically serve as unelected but voting delegates at the national convention … which chooses the presidential nominee.
Four years ago, the superdelegates, who account for roughly 15 percent of the total delegate vote, favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders by an incredible 97 to 3 percent.
Fast forward to 2020 and Dems have made what DNC Chair Tom Perez called “historic” changes to this ‘super-delegation’ — now referred to as “automatic” delegates. These non-elected insiders may not vote on the first ballot.
That’s a big deal.
But with so many candidates still in the contest, and those contests front-loaded — next week’s Super Tuesday features primaries in 14 states, including populous California and Texas — it appears unlikely that any candidate will garner a majority of delegates on the first ballot.
And next come the superdelegates.
And, again, they are likely to hurt the Vermont senator.
“Sanders … could win the most pledged delegates — those allocated on the basis of votes during the marathon Democratic primaries,” explains The Guardian, “but be swindled, at the last, by the Democratic party elite.”
That is not all. “DNC members discuss rules change to stop Sanders at convention,” reads a recent Politico headline.
Reporting from the “sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting,” Politico discloses discussions regarding “the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention.”
Democratic process does not appear to be the Democrats’ strong suit.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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2 replies on “The Superdelegate Zombie Apocalypse”
Democracy can be a tyranny of the majority, which is why the United States is a republic with protections, limiting government (or majority) powers to the point of protecting the rights of the ultimate minority, a single individual.
The Democrats seek to hold themselves to be a democracy and are finding themselves in the uncomfortable position of seeing a nominee arise out of their “democratic” process where only a small percentage and highly motivated portion of their true constituency participates. In this cycle, and compounded by a large field of non-dominate “moderates”, is causing Sanders to accumulate have the largest plurality.
The Democrats have forgotten their “silent majority” and it is becoming more and more apparent that their silent majority, as well as the general electorate, will not fall in line with the “independent democratic socialist” if he and his platform gains the nomination.
It ends up that Sanders, in the Democrats process as presently defined, is very dangerous.
I expect those who actually run and control the Democratic Party will act to prevent his nomination because they see it as existential. They are correct.
Their problem is that openly taking away the nomination from Sanders may result in a schism within the party every bit as existential as being soundly defeated in the general election.
It appears that it may be a no-win scenario for the Democrats in the presidential race regardless of the fact that hatred of Trump is their most (and perhaps only) unifying issue. This year, and if I were the Democratic Party “leadership” I would accept the realities, begin concentrating on the House and Senate races by getting Bloomberg off the stage and back behind the curtain, buying as many seats as he can. I would also commence making the party process less democratic — perhaps even making a rule that to qualify as its presidential nominee the person will have to be a dues-paying member for a reasonable period of time before commencing their run for the position.
This is what the Democrats get for allowing, indeed setting up Sanders to be HRC’s “loyal opposition” and rigging the last cycle The party learned nothing from the experience, but Sanders and his sure supporters did.
The Democratic Party needs to be prepared for a literal riot if Sanders has substantially more elected delegates than any other Democratic candidate, but does not receive the nomination.
Of course, if Sanders does receive the nomination, then there will be riots in the days after the General Election.