I think that super delegates should have been completely done away with, but
I suppose that's too much to hope for.
Miriam
Democrats Vote to Strip Power From Superdelegates
By Chas Danner, New York Magazine
26 August 18
Democrats voted overwhelmingly on Saturday for the biggest reforms to its
presidential nomination process in decades, including a major reduction in
the power of superdelegates, and a measure to make state caucuses more
accessible. The reforms were approved after a four-hour debate at the
Democratic National Committee's meeting in Chicago, and were backed by both
DNC chairman Tom Perez and Senator Bernie Sanders, who had sharply
criticized the role of superdelegates as he ran for president in 2016.
Under the old process, superdelegates - made up of members of the Democratic
National Committee, elected officials, and distinguished party elders - were
not bound to the outcomes of primaries and caucuses, but could vote to
nominate whichever presidential candidate they wanted at the national
convention. This gave them an outsize, and in the minds of many, unfair role
in determining the party's nominee. (Superdelegates made up about 15 percent
of the delegates at the 2016 convention.)
Under the new process starting in 2020, superdelegates will still be able to
attend party conventions as delegates, but will not be able to vote in the
first round of ballots and will be able to vote in the very rare event of a
deadlock.
The way state caucuses are governed will also change under the reforms, with
state parties now required to accept absentee votes, rather than requiring
caucuses voters to be physically present to support candidates at the
events. That fundamentally changes the nature of caucuses, which are
old-school, state party-run affairs that force campaigns to not only engage
and win over supporters, but get them to show up in person and remain
organized amid the chaos. Barack Obama's underdog victory against Hillary
Clinton in 2008, for instance, relied on his campaign's strategy of
dominating the state caucuses. And had Obama not won the first caucus in
Iowa, he might have never gotten enough momentum to win the nomination.
Caucuses are also run by the state parties, as opposed to primaries, which
are run by the states themselves. Saturday's changes are expected to
accelerate more caucus states switching to primaries - another change sought
by reformers.
The new rules are a big victory for Sanders, who lost the party's
contentious nomination battle to Hillary Clinton in 2016, but thanks to his
newfound popularity and passionate base, now exerts considerable influence
over the direction of the party. Clinton won the majority of delegates based
on the primary and caucus votes in 2016, but was also the predominant choice
of the party elite who made up the superdelegate pool, something the
anti-establishment Sanders and his supporters saw as an unfair advantage at
a time they had already been accusing the DNC of showing favoritism toward
Clinton.
"Today's decision by the DNC is an important step forward in making the
Democratic Party more open, democratic and responsive to the input of
ordinary Americans," Sanders said in a statement after the vote.
The changes marked the culmination of a two-year-long process that began as
a way to soothe the intraparty animosity of 2016, and was led by the Unity
Reform Commission, a group that was joint-established by the Sanders and
Clinton camps at the convention that year. The commission had agreed on the
necessary changes in December, and eventually passed along their
recommendations to the DNC's rules and bylaws committee
But opponents of the reforms continued to make their case ahead of the vote,
making for a tense and emotional meeting at times.
Superdelegates were created to be the last line of defense against outsider,
potentially disastrous candidates, and everyone has now seen a real world
example of what can happen if someone like Donald Trump can win a major
party's nomination and its de facto leader. Critics point out that the new
rules may make it easier for such candidates to win the right to represent
the party regardless of what the party establishment - or the party's
activists - ultimately thinks of them:
There was also pushback from older black delegates, who argued that the
reforms would reduce the power and influence of hundreds of black and Latino
party leaders, and result in less diversity on the convention floor - a
possibility reformers dismissed, citing delegate diversity requirements.
When former DNC chair Don Fowler, who helped organize opposition to the
reforms, said at the meeting that the moves would "disenfranchise" minority
groups within the party, some people in the crowd at the meeting tried to
shout him down, calling him a liar.
Another former DNC chair, Howard Dean, wholeheartedly endorsed the changes
in a video played at the meeting. He argued that the DNC should respect the
will of grassroots voters, and that young voters "have lost faith in our
party's nominating process, and make no mistake, this is a perception that's
cost us at the ballot box."
Trusting the Democratic party's electorate over its elites was a common
theme among the reformers' pitches in Chicago. "Voters want us to be
listening to them, and this is a way to show that we're listening, to show
that we're understanding the changes that had to be made after 2016," DNC
vice- chairman Michael Blake said on Friday. Perez and others also
emphasized before the vote on Saturday that Democrats' most important common
goal was electing a Democrat to the White House. Attracting new and younger
Democrats, avoiding intraparty conflict, and respecting voter's wishes
would, Perez insisted, put the next Democratic nominee "in the strongest
position possible" to win back the White House.
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