The notion that parties shouldn't get to pick their own candidates is mind-boggling.

It wasn't just the super-delegates, either. It was the winner-take-all allocation of delegates in many states. Not to mention caucuses, which are extremely undemocratic.

I have much more faith in the Dem primary voter.
We don't need the nanny superdelegates.

It's the independents and crossover Republicans who can muck it up.

I'm also fine with discussions about changing it. The super delegate aspect is about much more than votes. It's about skin in the game and party building.

It was one of several reasons they were included. This was right after the losses we suffered and it was determined that was one of the causes.

Let's just let the rich and elites select our candidates!

The real point is that parties (which, by extension, means its members) should get to select their candidates, not just anyone who wants to come out and vote that day for a different party, or who doesn't belong to a party at all (probably likely with some Trump voters), and that caucuses should be eliminated altogether.

Throwing out a tiny safety net like saying that people who vote in party primaries should actually be registered to vote with that party is not limiting it to the rich and the elite.

Super D's are necessary to solidarity of our Party.

They're the people who walked the precincts, went to the meetings that bored the rest of us, took a chance and made a run for office, stuck it out for years. put up with the crap that office holders put up with and most important, are loyal to the Democratic Party.

In many states non-party members can vote in primaries. We can easily wind up with a tRump of our own. After this debacle, it's more obvious than ever that some kind of Party control needs to be in place. Parties do not have to be democracies. Even our DEMOCRACY depends on representatives, our party has to also.

federal elected officials salaries and outside incomes (if permitted), with a few unpaid civic and paid religious leaders' incomes tallied in.

They are also the ones that make several trips to DC or other parts of the country to attend meetings. At their expense.

It telegraphs to everyone to not even bother join the race. The choice is made.

Voters are not easily persuaded by them. The campaigns have to do their job by encouraging them to vote. If the voters are not motivated then no endorsement from a superdelegate will help. Most voters don't even know who are the delegates or really care. They wouldn't recognize the state party chair or vice chair. They wouldn't recognize the DNC members that are not elected officials. At best they might recognize 3 of the delegates which would be the Senators and their U.S. Representative if they are Democrats.

Trump would have never gotten the Republican nomination. Super-delegates would have had nothing to do with it. Republican voters thought he would be a strong candidate and he was. It is just lucky for us that he is also crazy. Remember several times he was in a statistical tie with Hillary, and then did something completely crazy because he lives in an alternate universe (criticizing a Gold Star family and talking about sexual abuse on tape).

should learn the history of why we have them.

...to paint a picture before it existed. If they had acted as a safety valve, which they're supposed to be, that's fine. This time around they were used as a weapon and it wasn't right.

Constantly one campaign kept saying how 90% of the superdelegates were already committed more than a year away from the election. The campaign kept saying that from day one and it discouraged other candidates from joining the race.

Why bother have the primaries or caucuses at all if the superdelegates already made up their mind who the nominee will be 8 months before a single vote is cast?

behind her that would help her in the general election. And they certainly have been.

Some democrats those supers seem to be...

...and more evidence that they aren't needed. If they can't be impartial in service (they can have whatever opinion they want, of course) then they shouldn't be superdelegates.

You want them as a safety valve. OK. That's fine. but if that is their purpose why are 90% of them declaring for a candidate 16 months before the convention? Why are they basically discouraging other candidates from entering the race?

And it wouldnt have brought party unity to the GOP. If you add up the Trump and Cruz voters...they make up more than 65% of votes cast among Republicans. If the RNC, who hates both those candidates, threw them out and nominated Rubio or Jeb, there would be civil war.
There is a revolt right now going on in the GOP against the establishment. Superdelegates would not have saved them.

And such a revolt is not out of the question for the Democrats in 2024. That primary is going to be ugly.

They wouldn't have to if a sociopath like Trump ran.

The news media was calling them up and asking who they were endorsing. They have as much of a right to endorse as anyone does.

I find that incredibly hard to believe. Especially considering the WikiLeaks revelations with Debbie and others.

If you want superdelegates as a safety valve in some way to keep nutty candidates out. Fine. But when campaigns use superdelegates as a strategy to discourage other Democrats from running, and it give the race an aura of inevitability. That's undemocratic. It reeks of cronyism and elitism. This is essentially why the youth have given up on this election and why we have another rival website that now despises the party.

It's a checkerboard of systems as it is, which is probably the most undemocratic thing of all, outside of caucuses.

I think it is fair and appropriate that the DNC has it in place. It did not change the outcome of the nomination but if we had a George Wallace or Donald Trump we would had been able to pull that lever and reject him.

But that alone was not the reason our system is fair and appropriate. It is also the elected delegates are allocated proportionately based on election results. Under the GOP method the margin would had been about a 2,000 delegate advantage instead of the just over 500.

With the smaller margin it required both candidates to seek out the best policies to support. It also helped that we had fewer candidates in the primary compared to the Republicans. Which means more of the voters supported the ideas of our candidates than the Republican candidates.

How many states did Trump win with under 50% of the vote? That's what did them in. If someone who can't even get 50% or even 40% of the vote but receives close 100% of the delegates it is going to create problems. I don't necessarily agree with you on Superdelegates but the proportional allocation of delegates seems to be something most people overlook.

Giving one person all of the delegates from a state also make it harder for the super delegates to do anything. The DNC uses 15% superdelegates. To stop Trump, the RNC would have needed about 30% superdelegates and have ALL of them vote against Trump.

It just happened to be 15% for this election. It was higher in the past because we had more elected Democrats in Congress and Governors. They also use an incentive I believe in the number of DNC members that are not elected or state party members. In Indiana we had 3 DNC members for the 2008 election and it was bumped to 4 after the election I believe because Obama won Indiana. It was dropped back to 3 after the 2012 election.

IMO unelected delegates should remain as a safety valve. They are not going to influence the nomination process as the elected delegates are elected either at the ballot or at the state convention.

Another feature of the DNC allocation of delegates is how they are determined for each state. It is based on voter turnout for the Democratic candidate for the past previous elections. Regardless of total population. If two states had equal population but one has more voting Democratic than Republican than the other state that votes more Democratic will have more delegates.

If the voters choose Trump and the RNC threw that out and picked their own person....there'd be blood on the floor of that convention.

Half the party wouldnt vote.

You can't unify a party when the voters pick one person and the establishment thwarts that pick. You'll trigger civil war.

I don't see that working out well. Superdelegates only representative 15% of the total number of delegates in the DNC. If the GOP had that system they'd still be stuck with Trump. Trump got 70% of the elected delegates. Let's suppose the RNC had 85% elected and 15% super delegates. Even if Trump received 0 super delegates he'd still have 59.5% of the total number of delegates. So he'd still have won.

Proportional allocation of delegates seems to be much more important for the Democrats stopping a Trump like canidate. If the RNC had proportional allocation of delegates then Trump might not be the nominee.

What they do is set the tone early in the race to help weed out wackos.


For example, if early in the race for the GOP nomination, if Kasick or Rubio had 3 or 4 hundred SuperDelegates already on their side, the entire race would have been different.


Thankfully for us they don't have this system. And that helped us get gifted DJT.

of a nutso dictator-wanna-be before he advanced to the general election.

When Obama was running and had secured the lead in the primaries, many super delegates switched their votes to him to add their support. That's because they recognized that even though he wasn't their first choice, he was a fine candidate.

That's not the case with Trump.

I also believe no state should be winner take all. Not in a primary system. The GOP process is terrible, because some states are proportional and other states are winner take all. Very undemocratic.

I think SuperDelegates are fine.
I think closed primaries are okay too.
The Democratic Party (or GOP) have the right to pick their nominee.

I am against caucases.
I am against winner take all states.
I am against open primaries.
I am against Iowa going first.

II am not thrilled with open primaries either

were elected at some time in their past. This system tempers momentary passions with wiser older LOYAL heads. Selecting a Democratic nominee should not be a free-for-all. The next Bernie could be a tRump in Bernie clothing.

regardless of population.

Just because the weighting isn't entirely uniform doesn't make it undemocratic.

If they had super delegates they would have probably ended up with Jeb or Kasich, maybe Rubio.

Instead like 70% of the vote went to Trump and Cruz, two men absolutely despised by the powers that be in the RNC.

When every state has closed primaries. Then Democrats will be picking the Democratic candidate.

Despite all the hoopla and hand-wringing that happens every four years, they've always fallen in line with voter intent.

I see it as a good safety valve. Keep it.

When you are 16 months away from the convention and 90% of these superdelegates immediately declare commitment to one candidate....you've tilted the scales.

Once the voting is over, the superdelegates can openly endorse.

the Republicans lack any kind of meaningful diversity, so all anyone has to do on their side is appeal to the dumbest, angriest slobs in their party and they'll win

The problem wasn't the SD so much but the fact that they were used from Day 0 to push a narrative. Oh look how many votes one candidate already has.

...when you're "safety valve" is used a bludgeon.

Electing the other strong candidate would not have "blown up the party." Let's not re-fight the primaries.

I really don't.

I can see the valid point you make. Fairness though is also something that angered many with DWS. But, yeah, if the GOP had it, they would have more than likely NOT have had Trump, and with HRC being unpopular overall, and DJT being even more so, a change of GOP nominees may have had this be a toss-up right now, or worse!