4,765. The superdelegates didn’t determine the nominee. I don’t think they ever have. As a delegate- you’re usually pledged to a candidate before the convention.
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I’m not sure, but it’s nice to have this question asked and thoughtfully answered, so thanks for that!
The main thing that bothers me is that so many Dems didn’t (and still don’t) seem to understand how influential the superdelegates potentially were. They were focused on the superdelegates’ votes themselves, and convinced they had no tangible effect other than those actual votes. As such, these Dems (smart, intelligent people, some I know who have PhD’s) were demonstrating that they did not perceive or understand the subtle nuances of how superdelegates were being used to manipulate and game the system. If they couldn’t understand that, then what hope was there to see general understanding of that issue, or all of the other ways the electoral process is gamed or manipulated? I would just love to see these things generally understood, so that discussion can actually be had and decided in a popular fashion. If you can’t tell, I care more about electoral reform than I do about which candidate or party is being elected. I think that until we fix our electoral process, it doesn’t really matter who is in office. To me, these little things (like superdelegates and gerrymandering) are just distractions from fixing the big things (like plurality voting, the electoral college, etc.). Of course, by “fixing” things, I’m just referring to making a voting system that does in actuality what it seems to be intended to do. What it should actually be intended to do is a more complicated matter of opinion, perhaps.
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This thread seems relevant to the votes vs delegates debate:
And these tweets are relevant to the “media portrayal of super-delegates” discussion:
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I know you didn’t write the DNC rules, but you are doing a very good job of describing them in that paragraph. And that’s exactly why many voters think the DNC is outdated, ridiculous, and over controlling of the party’s pick.
A) the DNC is not the people best informed, but they think they are and act like they are.
B) the superdelegates vote for whom the Party establishment (ie, those already in control) want to win, not the person the primary Voters want to win
C) it isn’t done to put the put the Voted-upon winner in a stronger position, it is done to put the head-of-the-party’s choice ahead.
D) Let us not forget that voter polls from early voting often sway those voting later. In the case of a primary system where states vote on different days, winning some states changes the outcome of the votes of the next round. Using superdelegates to alter, or APPEAR to alter, vote outcomes can change the later voting states.
In essence, those who ran the DNC used the superdelegate system to alter the vote count, percieved and honestly, for their chosen candidate. This made people who voted for Sanders not trust the DNC, not trust the nominee, not support the nominee, and possibly not show up to vote for the nominee. That year, that was a perfect ProTrump outcome.
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Making superdelegates ‘represent their states’ is a bad idea.
You’ve literally recreated the electoral college system in a system that is originally proportional. In the next primary, states with a large number of superdelegates will be worth more. This can easily create situations where a candidate wins the majority of votes cast but loses the primaries.
This is a way worse system than the defacto system of ‘superdelegates just bandwagon the winner of the popular vote’.
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When Trump is reelected in 2020.
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If superdelegates represented their states Hillary would be on 741 delegates on March 1 and 1323 delegates on March 22.
Seriously, these proposed rules are terrible and a ticking timebomb. I cannot believe a room full of people decided to make the democratic primaries work more like the electoral college system in 2017.
If you thought 2016 was bad with media people representing unpledged delegates as if they were real, wait until you hit a future campaign where [candidate you dislike] has a majority of actual finalised delegates while having a minority of the votes. This will happen.
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If a party wants an advantage in the election, they should be leaning in and gaming the electoral college–not making their processes less like the EC. The states that matter the most are the ones that are swing states when they are winner-take-all, weighted by their number of electoral votes. There are easy schemes for weighting rationally that will will help pick candidates that will game the EC. This would essentially overweigh influence from ohio, florida, mi, and the like, and underweigh small states, and ones that are in the bag for either R or D, even if are large like NY and CA and TX. Clinton won a ton of delegates in Texas, and what good did it really do, since she was going to lose all of those electoral votes.
Gee, Trump can’t possibly win in 2020, can he? 
There are loads of ‘easy schemes’ for weighting ‘rationally’. However, someone will have to choose one, and I will guarantee that the person who chooses whose votes count more than others will be making a decision you do not like.
Clinton won Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania in the primaries but lost them all in the general.
Not that I think your post is essentially wrong. A winning strategy has to take into account the distribution of electoral votes, notwithstanding those who think that if we all squeeze our eyes tight shut and wish real hard, it will disappear.
It’s hard to see how a party’s Governors, Senators, State Reps, Secretaries of State wouldn’t be influential regardless of being delegates. And how a guy who wasn’t a member of the party and who quit the party as soon as its use to him was over would have gotten early support.
This is all lost causism.
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Democratic party officials/officers…
Even the ‘good uns’ trend mentally, and morally, lazy.
“It’s never been about perfection, the commission’s Vice Chair Larry Cohen said of the recommendations, but “large steps if not giant steps” in putting voters first. Cohen was one of the few prominent labor leaders to buck Clinton and endorse Sanders.”
Truly a “no can do” attitude. If 715 bad ideas are a bad idea then, according to what theory is 315 bad ideas ‘not’ still a bad idea. If you are in the donkey business ‘half an ass’ is still asinine but only edible, not rideable.
A further constraint must be ‘no pre-primary’ endorsements by the fraudulently-named ‘super-duper-puper’ delegates. They are ‘constitutionally conservative’ being office holders [not 100% but tending].
Thus making it easier for an unqualified Trump-type candidate to infatuate stupid voters (yes, Democrats have them too) and win nomination. Didn’t we learn anything?
I used to prefer the caucus system myself, but then last year we endured a ridiculous night of caucusing with a 6 month-old and my wife with some temporary mobility issues, and I realized it logistically excludes many of the very people whose voices should be heard the most.
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Things like the super delegates are the focus in the comments here speaks to how the important changes are likely going to be dropped because statistically insignificant feelings. Super delegates did not cause Bernie to lose. Period. There is absolutely no truth to your opinion that polls of super delgates influenced potential voters from challenging the establishment.
However, the transparency of the budget and the standardizing of primary rules to hand to the states will make a massive difference in primaries and elections. If anything, they should be making individual delegates matter more by weighting them by swing states - another steps that would have resulted in a Bernie win. Solve problems, don’t attack windmills.
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It is, until you are a member of a group that it fails for catastrophically. It tends to fail most obviously if you have a physical disability or children. It fails in a more subtle manner if you are a member of a race or gender that gets drowned out in conversation.
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