Why would you assume that superdelegate are any less likely to go along with a bombastic asshole who tells people what they want to hear? Have you seen Republican elected officials and lobbyists running from Trump on a large scale?
LOL, were you alive in 2008? HRC had a similar “commitment” from superdelegates, and it meant nothing.
1 Like
Those states still have democrats in them. Why shouldn’t they have a voice in the primary? Clinton also won in swing states like Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio. She also won in Important Democratic backstops like New York, California, and Illinois. That seems much more valuable than Sander’s big wins in Utah, Nebraska, and Idaho.
2 Likes
Until the Democratic party can convince individual states to drop their patchwork of regressive election laws, these reform efforts will always be marginal at best, and potentially disastrous at worst. For instance, caucuses were a much larger factor in preventing people from voting, states that have caucuses averaged something like 17% turnout, but the DNC has no authority over the manner of elections in any state, so they stay.
But if they set a standard for how to run primary, then there is political leverage in each state to change the primary system to match. So even without authority, they can still make a difference.
1 Like
My original point was not that Superdelegates are amazing. It’s that they’re not that big of a deal. You are correct in that they can create an appearance of corruption but Clinton won by ten points. I really doubt the they have enough effect to swing ten percent of democratic primary voters. Their votes weren’t enough to stop Obama or Kerry.
My worry with this and some of the other proposed reforms is that they are mostly in reactions to 2016 which was an extremely unusual primary. Primaries rarely have only two candidates for their entire so Superdelegates can help give someone with only a plurality a clear win. There are rarely candidates that are not part of the party so Superdelegates aren’t always as one-sided in their votes. And importantly there is rarely such a major political shift in a party’s base, especially while that party is in power. While hindsight might make things clear now remember that it wasn’t actually a clear choice. Obama had an 88% approval among democrats. Clinton had been a very effective and popular part of the administration. Before that she was a widely respected Senator. Sanders was an obscure Senator with a not terribly impressive legislative record. Conventional wisdom pointed to Clinton being the best Candidate. And while to those of us on the far left the choice might have been clear remember that a Progressive democrat hadn’t won a presidential election since Roosevelt. Obama was the first non-southern Democrat elected since Kennedy. Few people truly understood how much conventional political wisdom would be thrown out in 2016.
It’s now clear that there’s been a major shift in politics. And hopefully the DNC will change. But Superdelegates were not the problem in 2016. And they can have their uses. They could stop a Trump-like candidate from getting the nomination. Or say the presumptive nominee has a major scandal late in the primaries they could nominate the runner up even if they are behind in the bound delegate count. Instead of abolishing the system maybe they should be barred from formally reporting their vote until after the primaries so they don’t influence voters.
1 Like
“Momentum.”
Those early southern wins on Super Tuesday ensured that Clinton was always shown to be ahead in the race for delegates.
Yeah that’s the issue I want the unity committee to handle especially with the nonsense that’s coming out of the DCCC. Frankly, if the party doesn’t abandon the one-size-fits-all approach to state level elections they’re going to ruin their chances in 2018 and beyond.
1 Like
Yeah, and it’s a valid complaint to say that the primary schedule is awful. If the primary is to put the best candidate to win an election forward, then the schedule should be based on importance and not tradition. If Super Tuesday was the closest contests from the last election, or if the primaries were ordered from closest contest to least close then there would be the most important contests first.
And yes, it does mean acknowledging that not ever vote has the same importance - but denying that votes are not equal is based on unfounded idealism and not reflecting the reality of the electoral college.
3 Likes
So she won because more people voted for her? What a terrible system.
2 Likes
http://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/silver-demprimary-3.png
Where’d that massive 200 delegate lead come from?
Alabama +36
American Samoa +2
Arkansas +12
Colorado -16
Georgia +44
Massachussets -1
Minnesota -15
Oklahoma -4
Tennessee +11
Texas +72
Vermont -16
Virginia +29
quite the cushion…
1 Like
This was my thought exactly. If the party wants to be able to veto a candidate, just in case, then they should just have a just-in-case veto. Not a thumb they can put on the scale.
I’m still unsure of what your point is. She got momentum because she won a bunch of primaries? That’s how it’s supposed to work.
maybe the clinton groundwork in Alabama would be helpful in the Moore/Jones race. It was largely useless in the general.
Still don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Do you think that Democrats in red states shouldn’t have a say in the nomination? By that logic we should ignore very blue states as well. California is going to vote democratic anyway why listen to them? Clinton also won the Ohio and Florida primaries by large margins only two weeks after super Tuesday. Unless you’re trying to argue that momentum was solely responsible for Clinton’s thirteen and thirty one point margins respectively.
As for groundwork. Virginia, where Clinton also won, was solidly Democratic in the general election and the party just saw major local victories there. There’s more to the Democratic party than the presidential election. The Republicans have been very successful in helping state and local candidates in pretty blue states. Why shouldn’t democrats do the same?
3 Likes
By the same token, Trump won vast numbers of delegates in solidly blue states. If the states that parties were likely to win were weighted more heavily, we would likely have been looking at different results in both primaries.
But the system is impenetrable and not entirely representative, by design.
Sorry, but I think all assertions along this line are optimistic bordering on delusional. Regardless of how Sanders polls now and how he polled after the election, those polls utterly fail to take into consideration the negative effects of opposition advertising/Russian election hacking.
1 Like
You know, that delusion goes both ways friend. The difference is we are living out the results of the Clinton delusion right now. So if you don’t mind, I’ll stick to my Sanders delusion, thank you very much.
3 Likes
As you say, in your case it was a temporary issue. The caucuses I’ve done have been very family- and handicapped- friendly, another advantage of having it be a neighborhood activity, though I know anything longer than 5 minutes is can be a trial for an infant.
For me the advantage of having a process requiring engagement far outweighs the disadvantages, and and as always we need to avoid letting perfect be the enemy of good.
I understand though why so many Clinton supporters were slagging off caucuses during the last primary: caucus outcomes tend to lean more progressive than primary outcomes, and the added voice they give to rank-and-file Democrats is a threat to any leader (like DWS) who wants to abuse their authority.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
