On The Superdelegate Nonsense

I've been pretty vocal about the superdelegate situation, about how it's a media creation designed to set Democrats against themselves and damage the party's credibility as we move into the fall. I'm not the only one, either. Today comes a thinly sourced story about how the Clinton campaign is vowing to go after pledged delegates who represent the distribution in the various state primaries and caucuses, a charge that the campaign summarily denied. The truth is that the Democratic Party's somewhat convoluted system practically demands that some pledged delegates will be up for grabs, but this Politico/Drudge effort doesn't pass any kind of smell test. Essentially, my feeling is that the Democratic Party put together a system they never thought they would have to use. For decades now both parties have created a calendar designed to nominate a candidate as early as humanly possible. They never considered the implications of having two equally strong candidates and a campaign that would grind on (although let's get some perspective on that; it's only February 19 here, and the scenarios being games out may be inoperative in a matter of weeks). Now that the system is being trotted out, pretty much for the first time ever (arguably, 1984 brought these rules into play), it's showing a little rust. OK, a lot of rust. They're trying to patch it up and have a bunch of elder statesmen manage this situation. I think this is a freak-out that is far too premature.

However, I have to continue to call B.S. on this idea that superdelegates will somehow subvert the popular will and act to destroy the Democratic Party from within. I understand there's not a lot of belief from those who have seen the party screw over their base time and time again in recent years. While I agree that the concept of superdelegates should come as a surprise to many, and they almost certainly should be fixed so this doesn't happen again, there's a ton of misinformation out there about who these superdelegates actually are.

I talked with Garry Shay, a superdelegate from here in California, a DNC member and the Chair of the Rules Committee for the California Democratic Party. He is a party activist who has a day job and was concerned by all the media attention taking him away from his work. He was an antiwar activist who worked hard for George McGovern. He was elected by the executive board of the CDP to his DNC post and essentially is a representative of the state party rank and file. That includes someone like me, who ran and won a seat on the Democratic State Central Committee in this state. The barriers to entry, then, are very low, and the likelihood that these superdelegates are not "party bosses," whatever that means, but committed activists, is very high. Shay surmised it was about 1/2 of all superdelegates. These are in large part, the people who elected Howard Dean to the chairmanship of the party, against the will of much of the elected leadership. A good summary of who these delegates are is here.

Why are there superdelegates at all? Basically, before 1972 the process for choosing a nominee was far less small-d democratic. The McGovern reforms regarding primaries, and the 1974 charter added some structure to the process. Shay didn't agree with me totally that this created rules that were essentially designed to not come into play, but he did say that superdelegates were created to "give members more of a connection to the nominee," almost a psychological basis, rather than a concerted effort to impose their will on the party. In fact, superdelegates have never sought to choose the nominee in a way that didn't reflect the popular will. Even in 1984, when Walter Mondale had a plurality but not a majority of delegates, the superdelegates did not step in and anoint Gary Hart.

The either/or of whether a political figure has a responsibility to his own conscience or a responsibility to his own constituents is an age-old argument, and I don't think any side of this debate, with their own partisan reasoning, is going to advance it in any meaningful way. But clearly, there are outside pressures that would have come to bear on them with or without the overwatch by progressive organizations like MoveOn and DFA. The candidate with the most votes is going to get the majority of the superdelegates (probably by a similar proportion), and all of these machinations are going to amount to nothing.

Of far more concern to Shay, and myself, is what to do with these delegates in Michigan and Florida. It's an issue with few or no winning moves. Shay suggested a couple possibilities, like seating Florida with delegates halved, or holding new elections. But there are pitfalls with every scenario and clearly the rules were enforced with an eye to a clear winner emerging. This was a mistake, but the bigger mistake is exacerbating this by assuming all kinds of bad motives on the superdelegates and the party itself. The party gave out a bunch of votes to make everybody feel like they were participating and happy about the process. They never expected it to be decisive. And it still might not be. This is a failure of forward thinking, perhaps even incompetence, but not an attempt to hijack the democratic process.

That is safe, but the reputation of the Party may not be. Several developments over the last few days have given me pangs of concern about the Presidential race - the teflon coating being placed on McCain, the continued implementation in progressive political circles of right-wing smears on Obama and Clinton, and now this furor over superdelegates, which makes the process look very suspect. This is a narrative that can easily be fed to swing voters across the country, that the Democratic Party is some sort of top-down monolith that will ignore your votes. It's actually not true; the superdelegate effort was designed to create inclusion instead of exclusion. But exposing the underside of the primary process, between caucuses that are inherently disenfranchising and superdelegates that have a bigger say in the process than previously known and delegate distributions that don't reflect the popular vote, is giving the electorate something of a foul taste. Come the fall, much of that is likely to be forgotten. But it could be effectively implemented to really harm efforts both in retaking the White House and downticket. This is pretty bad news.

By the way, my perfect solution for the superdelegate problem in the future is to only have their votes count on the SECOND ballot, not the first. That way, they don't have a say in the initial process, and a percentage of the elected delegates can be established as a bar that can be scaled by a nominee on the first ballot. This won't piss off those party officials and will reassure the public, and most important won't give the media an excuse to include superdelegates in their counts.