Democrats Change Party Rules To Please The Berniecrats

(This caricature of the Democratic donkey is by DonkeyHotey.)

Many of Bernie Sanders supporters claimed that their candidate lost in 2016 because the Democratic Party rules were not fair. It wasn't true, but I guess it made them feel better. The truth was that most Democrats simply preferred Hillary Clinton as their nominee rather than a candidate ashamed to wear the Democratic Party label.

The biggest gripe the Berniecrats had was the SuperDelegates. They were upset that most SuperDelegates supported and voted for Clinton. They claimed that allowing SuperDelegates to support the candidate of their choice was unfair, and they wanted the party to do away with the SuperDelegates.

Last Saturday, the Democratic Party gave in to those Bernie supporters and changed the party's primary rules. They hoped the rule changes would satisfy those voters and keep them in the party. The two biggest changes are:

1. The party keeps SuperDelegates, but they will not have a vote in the first round of convention voting. SuperDelegates will vote only if no candidate gets a majority of pledged delegate votes in the first round (an event that is very unlikely).

2. The party is urging states to abandon the caucus system and go to a primary system -- or to count the absentee ballots at the caucus of those unable to attend. And it looks like several states will follow the party's wishes and moved to a primary vote system.

The crazy part of all this is that if these rules had been in effect in 2016, Bernie Sanders would still have lost and Hillary Clinton would still have been the nominee. With SuperDelegates, Clinton had 2,842 delegate votes, while Sanders had 1,865 delegate votes. But if you take away all the SuperDelegate votes, Clinton would still have won the nomination -- with 2,205 pledged delegate votes to 1,846 pledged delegate votes for Sanders.

The Berniecrats are celebrating the party changes, and I guess that's OK if it keeps them as Democratic voters. But actually the rules may hurt Sanders more than it helps (if he were to run again). That's because he did much better in caucus states than in primary states -- and several states are in the process of changing from a caucus state to a primary state.

Are There Corporate Lobbyists Who Are "Super Delegates" ?

I ran across an interesting thing at the Texas Democratic Convention last weekend. Sanders supporters were trying to get signatures on a petition to ban corporate lobbyists from being Democratic super delegates. I didn't sign the petition because the several people who asked to to sign couldn't answer two simple questions --
1) How many corporate lobbyists are super delegates?
2) Can you name one corporate lobbyist who is a super delegate?
They didn't know, but enthusiastically assured me that they exist.

I have never heard of any corporate lobbyist (lobbying for Wall Street financial organizations or giant private corporations) who have been appointed by the DNC to serve as a super delegate -- and I don't believe there are any. Until I see proof that they actually exist, I'm not going to believe it. It sounds like another myth being passed around by the Sanders campaign to make the party look bad.

So, I challenge any Sanders supporter who reads this to provide that proof. Give me the name of one corporate lobbyist who serves as a Democratic super delegate, and tell me what private for-profit corporation he/she represents currently.

Now, I know there are some super delegates from some organizations that were elected by the DNC  (organizations like unions, Planned Parenthood, minority groups, etc.) -- and some of them may actually lobby for those groups. That is different. They represent traditional Democratic constituencies -- and I have no problem with a few of them having a delegate vote.

But the Sanders supporters were saying there are lobbyists serving as super delegates who represent a giant for-profit corporation -- and that's a vastly different thing. Do they really exist? If so, I would love to know who they are.

(Note -- the image above was found at Pinterest.)

Sanders Campaign Has Entered A "Fantasy World"

I'm not saying Bernie Sanders should drop out of the presidential race. I have no problem with him carrying his candidacy all the way to the national convention. But I do think they should get a firmer grip on reality.

Here is what Sanders Campaign Manager Jeff Weaver told Chris Cuomo on CNN:

"I think what this campaign is looking for and what the senator is looking for is going into the convention and coming out with the nomination." 
 

"When we arrive at the convention, it will be an open convention, likely with neither candidate having a majority of pledged delegates." 

Frankly I thought he was smarter than that. The Democratic Party will NOT be having an open (or brokered) convention this year.

An open convention is one where no candidate has a majority of delegates voting for him/her on the first ballot (as is likely to happen in the GOP convention). That won't happen in the Democratic convention, because the Democrats only have two candidates. One of them will have a majority on the first ballot, and will be declared the nominee.

What Weaver (and evidently Sanders) is hoping for is that most of the super delegates will abandon Hillary Clinton en masse, and vote for Sanders. That isn't going to happen, and there's no logical reason why it should. Hillary Clinton has more than a 2 1/2 million vote lead over Bernie Sanders, and a significant delegate lead -- and it would take a miracle for that to change before the convention.

This seems a bit disingenuous anyway. Sanders and his supporters have been whining for months about how unfair it would be for super delegates to put Clinton over the top (forgetting that was exactly how Obama was nominated in 2008). Now they want those same super delegates to put them over the top -- and suddenly they don't think that would be unfair.

This dream of the Sanders campaign is just a fantasy anyway. Hillary Clinton will be the nominee of the Democratic Party -- and she will be nominated on the first ballot (whether it takes any super delegate votes or not). And that's not unfair. It's just the rules, and Bernie knew those rules before he entered the race.

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.

So is Sen. Bernie Sanders. Bernie actually gets to vote for himself!

Here is a breakdown of who makes up the 719 unpledged delegates:

• 20 distinguished Democratic party leaders, including current and former presidents, vice-presidents, congressional leaders, and DNC chairs
• 21 Democratic governors
• 46 Democratic members of the U.S. Senate
• 193 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives 
• 435 elected members of the Democratic National Committee (including the chairs and vice-chairs of each state's Democratic Party)

In short, they are the people Democrats have elected and cheered on for years. They are the people who campaigned for Pres. Obama and got him elected twice. They are the people who put their careers on the line to fight for and pass the Affordable Care Act, the stimulus bill, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, increasing the minimum wage, and every other piece of progressive legislation put before congress whether it passed or not. They are the most trusted names in the Democratic Party. They are us.

The 435 members of the DNC who also have superdelegate status are people who make politics their careers. They know their constituents, know their city and state, and in many cases know the candidates personally. They have been to the presidential rodeo and have deep experience with state and national campaigns. In short, they know this stuff far better than the average once-every-four-years primary voter.

To say that these career politicians - all experts in their field - have less standing to be convention delegates than some local Democratic club Treasurer in Kalamazoo simply because he got 41 votes at the party's district meeting is insane. If you were choosing someone to pilot your jumbo jetliner, you wouldn't complain if a group of career airline pilots were in on the decision.

The presidency is not a popularity contest. Sure, primary voters get the biggest say in the matter, as it should be. But the candidates that the two major parties offer up should be vetted not only by primary voters but by experts in the field who actually know them, have worked with them, and are best positioned to assess which candidate is prepared to lead the most powerful nation on earth.

And contrary to rumors being spread on social media, superdelegates are not stealth lobbyists planted to fix the nomination for the D.C. establishment. It's true that a few dozen of the 719 unpledged delegates are registered lobbyists or work for firms that lobby congress. But they weren't awarded their superdelegate status because of some backroom deal. They are superdelegates because they are respected party elders, like former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (who represents Taiwan's business interests in Washington) and former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt (whose Gephardt Group does lobbying work for Turkey and several U.S. corporations).

These former-politicians-turned-lobbyists comprise less than ten percent of the superdelegates and little more than one percent of the total convention delegates. The idea that this tiny subgroup of a few dozen is likely to sway the outcome of a 4,765 person vote is silly on its face.

As for the argument that superdelegates are tools of the establishment, no one could have been more of an "outsider" than Sen. Barack Obama in 2008. In the U.S. Senate for only three years, he was able to beat insider Sen. Hillary Clinton while navigating the superdelegate system to his advantage. He didn't moan about the system or Clinton's early superdelegate lead. He simply did the hard work of winning primaries and the confidence of the D.C. politicians who came aboard to support his insurgent campaign.

This time around, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both had 25 years in D.C. politics to establish the relationships needed to woo and win the support of superdelegates. If one of them did it better than the other, that's part of the skillset needed to be president. Politics is about people skills. Filling stadiums means nothing if you can't manage your cabinet and run the most complex bureaucracy in the world. If one candidate is better suited to handle the job of president, superdelegates are well-situated to make that assessment.

So Democrats, stop trying to change the rules mid-game. If you don't trust your own Democratic senator or congressman to have a single delegate vote out of the 4,765 at the Convention, then you aren't a Democrat.

Democrats Will Retain "Superdelegates"

One of the most controversial aspects of the 2008 race for the Democratic presidential nomination was the existence and power of a group of "superdelegates". These delegates were not chosen by their state delegations but designated by the national party, and they did not have to vote for the candidate preferred by their state's voters. They made up about 20% of the total number of delegates and in a close race could well determine who the candidate would be (even if the majority of voters had chosen a different candidate).

These unelected superdelegates are composed of "past presidents, current senate and Congress members, members of the Democratic National Committee, and other party luminaries such as labor leaders." Many people believed (including myself) that giving these unelected delegates 20% of all delegates votes and the ability to vote against the wishes of their own state, dilutes the concept of "one man, one vote" and has the stench of the old "smoke-filled back-room" politics of yesteryear.

The Democratic Party preaches about the sanctity of voters and giving power to the people, but the very concept of the superdelegate goes against that. The idea that party bigwigs can overrule the will of the voters is against the idea of letting the people choose their own candidate. After the 2008 election, the Democratic Party selected a Democratic Change Commission to look into the superdelegate question and decide whether the party should do away with them.

That commission decided to retain the superdelegates, but voted to strip them of the power to vote against the wishes of their state's voters. They said the superdelegates should vote for the candidate who won the majority of their state's votes (or delegates if a caucus was held instead of a primary). This was a good idea. It gave these officials a seat at the convention, but took away from them the power to defeat the wishes of the voters.

But it now looks like that won't happen. The rules committee has tossed out the commission recommendation and voted to retain the autonomy of the superdelegates. This does not come as a surprise. The change would have to be approved by the Democratic National Committee (all of whom are superdelegates). These people are not about to vote to curtail their own power over choosing the candidate of the party!

Instead, it looks like they will vote to slightly increase the number of elected delegates so that the superdelegates will only make up about 15% of total delegates instead of the current 20%. They actually are going to try and pass this weak gesture off as real reform. It is not. The superdelegates (ie - party bigwigs) will still have the power to overrule the will of rank-and-file party members.

If the party leaders want to practice smoke-filled back-room politics, then they should do away with the pretense of a democratic Democratic Party and do it. If they really believe in democracy, then they should do away with the power of superdelegates over elected delegates. There is no in-between proposal, and I'm dismayed that the party leaders don't realize this.

There is still a small chance that real reform can take place. The full DNC will vote on August 19-20 on whether to accept the rules committee's recommendation to retain the current superdelegate system. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for real reform though, since the powerful seldom vote to curtail their own power.

Superdelegate Race Is Tightening

When this primary season started, Clinton had a huge lead in the number of superdelegates who had stated their preference. But is the last couple of months, Obama has really closed the superdelegate gap. He has now pulled to within 23 superdelegates.

Even though the mainstream media has been bad-mouthing Obama for days about his relationship with his former-pastor, Rev. Wright, it doesn't seem to have stopped the trending of superdelegates to the Obama campaign. This week, Obama has gotten seven new superdelegates to four for Clinton.

Rep. Bruce Braley of Iowa, a new Obama superdelegate, said, "That's been one of the most frustrating things about this prolonged campaign, is we seemed to have gotten away from the critical issues that started this campaign...and now it's more about the side spectacle than the issues that voters really care about. I'm confident that he has taken this issue head-on. He has addressed it in a thoughtful and enlightened way."

In the overall delegate total (both pledged delegates and superdelegates), Obama now has a lead of 133 delegates. He has 1731 delegates and Clinton has 1598 delegates.

Hopefully, Indiana and North Carolina will end this nonsense by extending that lead even further.

"Traitor Joe" Loses His Vote

The excellent blog, McBlogger, brings us some great news. It looks like the turncoat senator, Joe Lieberman, has lost his superdelegate status. Thank goodness -- that was an honor he certainly didn't deserve.

According to Courant.com, the political blog of the Hartford Courant, the Democratic Party has taken away Lieberman's superdelegate vote in this year's nominating process. They did it because he has publicly come out in support of John McCain for president.

Now the party needs to finish the job, and strip Lieberman of all his committee seats in the Senate and kick him out of the Democratic caucus. He hasn't been a Democrat for a long time now. The party needs to recognize that fact and gives his committee seats to a loyal Democrat -- one who actually votes like a Democrat.

This needs to be done because:

1. Lieberman supports a Republican for president.

2. Lieberman has voted against the Democrats and for Bush on every bill relating to the Iraq War.

3. Lieberman votes with the Republicans a majority of the time on all bills.

4. Lieberman ran against the official Democratic candidate in the last election.

5. Lieberman is a creep. This one is just my opinion, but I think there are probably many, many Democrats who agree with me.

Now, some of you may say that Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat, and he's a part of the Democratic caucus. That's true, but Sanders votes with the Democrats 99% of the time -- Lieberman doesn't even come close to that. Let the Republicans put him on a committee if they want to.

Superdelegates Breaking For Obama

It's starting to look like the beginning of the end for Clinton's candidacy. She needs to win Texas and Ohio big to remain viable, but the latest polls show she will probably lose in Texas. Ohio still looks like it could be a win for Clinton, but it will be much closer and she won't get the big win that she needs.

That would be bad enough, but now the superdelegates are starting to declare their support of Obama. In the last couple of weeks, around two dozen superdelegates have thrown their support to Obama.

Some of them have even switched their support from Clinton to Obama -- like revered civil rights leader and Congressman from Georgia, John Lewis (pictured above). Early in the campaign, Lewis had said he was supporting Clinton, but yesterday he changed that. He is now on the Obama team.

Another Clinton supporter to defect to Obama is Texas' own longtime state legislator, Senfronia Thompson. Rep. Thompson is well-respected by her peers and her constituents. If the Democrats were to seize control of the Texas House in the next election, she would be the odds-on favorite to win the Speaker position.

These are important defections from the Clinton campaign. I'm starting to have serious doubts that she will make it to the Pennsylvania primary.

Are "Superdelegates" A Good Idea ?

Since the idea of superdelegates was initiated in the Democratic Party, they really have not had much effect on the final outcome of selecting a nominee. That is because in the recent past the nominee was chosen early as one candidate began to pull away from all the others. But there is a different dynamic in the 2008 primary season.

This year, there are two candidates virtually tied with more than half of the states having already chosen their delegates. There is a chance that tie will continue, maybe for another month or two (or even until the convention). That makes the superdelegates much more important. These superdelegates make up around 20% of the total Democratic delegates. That's a big hunk of delegates.

The possibility exists that one candidate could get a majority of votes cast and a majority of delegates chosen in the caucuses and primaries, but lose the nomination because the superdelegates preferred the other candidate. If that happens, it could look really bad for the Democratic Party.

It would give the perception to voters that the Democrats still choose their candidate in the "smoke-filled back rooms" by party big-shots. This would be very deflating, not only for independents and new voters, but also for many rank-and-file Democrats. What's the point of participating in the party process if you're just going to be over-ruled by the party bigwigs?

Frankly, such an occurrence would stink nearly as bad as the 2000 election in Florida, where the Supreme Court stepped in and took the election away from the voters.

Maybe it's time to consider doing away with the independent superdelegates. If we must give these "big-wigs" a delegate vote, they should be lumped in with the other delegates and all delegates should be apportioned according to how the state's primary or caucus turned out.

The Democrats stopped the convention choosing our nominee, and went to a primary/caucus system so the people would be able to choose the nominee. It is time to change the superdelegate system for the same reason.