Tuesday, April 05, 2016

In Defense Of The Democratic Party's Delegate Process

(This photo of the 2012 Democratic National Convention is from ottawalife.com.)

Bernie Sanders and his supporters have complained loudly that the delegate process of the Democratic Party is unfair -- that it is designed to support so-called "establishment" candidates. They are talking about the "super delegates", and say those delegates should support the nominee of the voters.

There are a couple of things wrong with their complaints. First, their candidate has won less delegates through the primary/caucus process than Hillary Clinton -- and has received over 2 1/2 million fewer votes than Clinton. Second, Barack Obama proved in 2008 that the process is not unfair -- by winning a majority support from those super delegates as an outsider.

The delegate process works for the good of the party, and is not unfair to any Democratic candidate -- and it does not need to be changed. Also, giving the super delegates an automatic slot at the national convention opens up more slots for rank-and-file Democrats to be able to go to the convention.

Here is a good defense of the current delegate process from Kevin Kelton at examiner.com:

The idea that the Democratic party's chosen system - designed in part by Sanders' campaign strategist Tad Devine - is somehow unfair only to Sanders is absurd. Unpledged "superdelegates" are not anonymous boogiemen. The are your senator and your congressman. Elizabeth Warren is a superdelegate. So is Al Franken, Sherrod Brown, Diane Feinstein, and Alan Grayson. So is President Obama, Vice President Biden, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Walter Mondale.


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