[OTB] Democrats Finalize Superdelegate Reforms

Os Trigonum · Aug 27, 2018

My opinion is that I agree with author Doug Mataconis that these changes mean very little.

https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/democrats-finalize-superdelegate-reforms

the money paragraphs, however, concern NY candidate-for-Congress Ocasio-Cortez:

But what if they don’t? The one danger lurking here for the DNC, as I’ve written here before, is that somebody as far out on the left beam as Bernie Sanders (or even further) picks up a head of steam and starts winning some early states. Without the fear of being left backing a losing horse when the superdelegates put their collective thumb on the scale for a more conventional candidate, a lot more of those noisy socialists might come out of the woodwork and nominate a really fringe candidate. What if they go whole hog and decide to nominate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? After all, if you can go straight from bartender to congresswoman, why not make the leap two years later to the White House?

This is the stuff that gives senior Democratic Party leaders nightmares. Their voters came withing spitting distance of nominating a card-carrying socialist last time around and it divided the party in two. Without the superdelegates acting as the adult monitors in the room, who might they nominate next?
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Here's Mataconis's followup and conclusion:

Jazz is obviously being tongue-in-cheek at the mention of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the candidate for Congress who has become something of a media star and a star among the Democratic Party’s “progressive” win since she is only 28 years old and thus ineligible to run for office. Nonetheless, the point he raises has merit. At least in part, the superdelegates were introduced into the process to prevent what happened to Democrats in 1972 when the party was ripped apart in the wake of the 1968 election and George McGovern, a candidate representing what was arguably at that time the equivalent of the wing represented by people like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez today, only to see itself suffer a historic defeat in the General Election and to avoid the intra-party battle that resulted in 1980 when Ted Kennedy challenged and nearly defeated President Jimmy Carter in a campaign that left the party weak and divided and ripe for the picking in the General Election. The superdelegates were supposed to be the means by which the party could take control of the process and hopefully prevent a repeat of those elections. Now, those superdelegates are essentially powerless unless the nomination fight goes to a second ballot. Ultimately, this strikes me as unlikely because the natural tendency in past nomination fights has been for voters to eventually unite behind a smaller group of candidates and for the eventual nominee to emerge from that group. Who that person might be at this point is something that I don’t think anyone can predict accurately, but it seems like the most likely outcome in the long run. Nonetheless, the possibility for chaos exists and it will be far harder for the party to control now.

As I’ve noted before, though, if Democrats really want to reform the nominating process they ought to consider other alternatives:

"If Democrats wanted to reform their process, they ought to be considering issues that go far beyond the rather irrelevant issue of superdelegates. For example, one of the main reasons that the primary battles in 2008 and 2016 were so drawn out is because current party rules require all states to award delegates on a proportional basis. This means that the candidate who wins the primary doesn’t really get much of an advantage from doing so and the process ends up getting dragged out longer than it ought to be because it becomes harder for a nominee to get the majority they need to win the nomination. Additionally, it seems to be long past time for both national parties to take a long and hard look at the whole idea of caucuses selecting delegates rather than primaries. As I’ve stated before, caucuses are a highly deficient means for selecting a nominee because they tend to lead to far lower participation by voters, don’t allow for early or absentee voting, and require people who may not have the means to do so to attend long party meetings at times that may be inconvenient for them. This is something that both national parties ought to look to, although in the end there isn’t much they can do about it since it’s an issue determined by state law and the preferences of state parties."

These changes to the nominating process would go much further to fixing the problems that the DNC seems to want to address than these rather meaningless changes to how superdelegates are used.
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more at the link

Os Trigonum · Sep 13, 2018

additional commentary in the link above

Buck Turgidson said: ↑

Interesting thread timing, this happened about 3 weeks ago:

In response, the DNC has adjusted how it selects its presidential nominee. Earlier this summer, a DNC subcommittee voted to make it impossible for superdelegates to have the deciding vote on the first ballot at a national convention. In practical terms this means that superdelegates cannot vote in the first voting round if their support is going to decide the selection. If no candidate wins a majority in the first round, superdelegates get to vote in subsequent rounds. Thanks to DNC Chair Tom Perez — who lobbied heavily for the change — the DNC has now voted to implement the proposal.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...or-2020/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5f02e86fc515
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[OTB] Democrats Finalize Superdelegate Reforms

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