A political party has three elements: the registered voters, also called the “party-in-the electorate;” the party’s elected officials, also called the “party-in-government;” and the party organization, or the county chairs, the state committees, and the national committees.
When the primaries or the state caucuses elect delegates to the national convention, those delegates represent only 1/3rd of the party, and that 1/3 is rather sketchy, since some states permit independents and even members of the other party to vote in primaries. In some cases those voters may be swayed by ads or by transient issues.
The Democratic Party in the Seventies put in place a system of Super Delegates, who will presumably take into account electability, party ideology, and the interests of the country when they vote at the Convention.
They are not democratically elected. So what. In a democracy, not everything is subject to majority rule. The First Amendment is not, the Supreme Court is not, and the Super Delegates are not. I understand some Sanders supporters are upset that some Super Delegates might be supporting Clinton. There may be good reasons for that support. After all, Sanders has not even won a majority of the Party-in-the Electorate so far.
What they are doing in some of the primaries amounts to election fraud. Winning by 12% in Wyoming and then losing the delegate count by over 20% is just not right. Elections are supposed to be decided by voters, not political hacks trying to pad their bank accounts.
ReplyDeleteI can tell you that if Sanders loses by superdelegates, I will not vote for her or any superdelegate that votes for her. She has run a Luntz/Rove campaign and to be honest she doesn't deserve democratic votes.