So if you're like me the above image is confusing. What's a pledged delegate and what's a "superdelegate?" Turns out a pledged delegate is what all these state primaries and caucuses are about. So if we go by what the voters in the different states have done, Obama is up by 13 delegates. But that still leaves "superdelegates." Superdelegates are elected party officials, like govenors, congresspeople, ex-presidents (Bill Clinton is a superdelegate) and the like. There are a total of 796 superdelegates out of the entire 4,049 delegates up for grabs. That's just shy of 20% of the total. Securing a superdelegate means convincing powerful individuals to vote for you. Hillary Clinton is leading in superdelegates by 86!
Apparently this all came to be so the Democratic party could keep "amateurs" out of the running for the party nomination. How is this Democratic?
Labels: Politics
7 Comments:
Amen. That is total bs.
James Madison said this:
"Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability."
Apparently not much has changed. The powerful have their own checks and balances put into place to keep them powerful. Sad statement on our nation.
And then, we also have the joy of "punished" states like Florida and Michigan who now get no delegates because the party doesn't like when they had their primaries.
It has become very difficult to not be cynical about the whole process.
In response to your blog I have to say that superdelgates are not entirely a bad thing. if you look at as a whole candidates have to persuade and make known to governors, congressmen and senators of who and why they are running for the nomination. it also makes a competition a premium for the nomination. Going back in the 1800s and the early 1900s is use to be more backroom wheeling and dealing. But at least now that are more people who have a fundamental say in who gets nominated and who would be the best nominee.
Now going back to Gary's comments on FLA & MI getting penalized. Both FLA and MI knew that if they moved their primaries ahead of what they agreed to do by following the rules that DNC set in place of Iowa, NH, South Carolina and Nevada being the first four states that they indeed would lose more then half if not all of their delegates. Now i agree more states should be more in the process earlier but you don't want to front-load the nomination process so early that other candidates like Obama and Edwards don't have chance to fairly compete with the nomination. Secondly when states make those agreements to follow rules and then breaks them because they feel left out it is their problem and no one else's, not even DNC.
Ryland, I agree with you about the Florida and Michigan issue, the states knew those were the rules and decided to go ahead with their plan knowing it would mean no delegates for their state. I think the party representatives who made the decision to move those primaries are the ones to blame on that matter.
But as for the superdelegates, I can't see how this is anything but a way to give the American people (millions of us) 80% of the vote and the powerful party leaders (under 800 of them) 20% of the vote. I don't think it has anything to do with making the nomination "more competitive" as you suggest, I think it has everything to do with these entrenched powers not letting the actual people have the final word as to who the nominee would be.
This is just one more piece of evidence to support the case that we do not actually live in a democracy, we live with the illusion of democracy.
Charlie--
Even before the matter of superdelegates enters the argument, I think there are multiple other points at which Jeffersonian democracy (or whatever kind of democracy you wish for) fails to make an appearance in this election. Superdelegates are hardly the most pervasive problem affecting party politics.
From increasingly early primaries, to the strong emphasis on out-fundraising one's opponent, the entire system is built to exclude "amateurs." Indeed, even the original institution of at-large delegates was meant to exclude certain "rogue" party members. Again, there is even a 15% threshold for earning delegates in a proportionally distributed primary (as the Democratic Party currently uses), further excluding underdogs that are at the additional disadvantage of relative anonymity early on.
And this is just the nominee selection process for one party. There is still a less-than-civil general election waged between two historic parties to the exclusion of third party candidates (save for self-made billionaires). Then there is the Electoral College to worry about.
I suspect that part of your dismay is over the fact that a well-established Clinton holds a lead over the "outsider" Obama largely due to the existence of superdelegates. Worrying whether or not superdelegates will make or break Obama before "actual people have the final word," I think mistakenly confers some sense of ordinariness to Obama as a candidate, as if he is some virtuous outsider who has cut through all the red tape only to be stopped short by the evil Superdelegate. Hardly. For a man whose campaign coffers have held a $100 million treasure, he is hardly an "amateur" just asking for someone to cut him a break. At this point, Obama and Clinton are both well established politicos treading the same paths to power as those before them, regardless of how they might differ when they arrive. It's about soundbytes, and dollars, and superdelegates, and even celebrity endorsements. Yep, politics as usual.
Kaz,
I'm well aware of the many other ways in which we do not actually live in a democracy.
I'm not under any pretenses that Obama is a "virtuous outsider." I never called Obama an amateur or inferred that. I was referring to the intentions of the superdelegate system. For 4 years I've been the kind of dude who votes for people like Dennis Kucinich for Pete's sake!
This was merely one more piece of junk that made me angry. I didn't feel the need to write a thesis on politics, just a short little blog about something that irked me.
Interestingly, CNN has a feature article examining how Superdelegates, objectively speaking, stink.
It even quotes one superdelegate making the same observation you have, that superdelegates deciding the nominee is not very democratic.
Kudos.
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