Sanders campaign tries to have it both ways on superdelegates

Sanders campaign tries to have it both ways on superdelegates

For months, Democratic National Committee member Billi Gosh has received letters, emails and phone calls urging her to switch her vote at the Democratic National Convention from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders.

Gosh is one of 10 Democratic superdelegates from Vermont, Sanders’ home state, where 86 percent of voters chose him in the Democratic primary in March. Superdelegates — party and elected officials who make up about 15 percent of all Democratic delegates — can vote for whichever candidate they want, unlike pledged delegates, who are divvied up based on how each state’s Democrats voted.

“There’s been a lot of pressure on the four us,” Gosh said, referring to herself and the three other pro-Hillary superdelegates in her state, including former Gov. Howard Dean and the current Gov. Pete Shumlin. (Sanders is himself a superdelegate, and it seems fairly certain where his allegiances lie.)

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“I really look at the discussion of superdelegates now as just really being an attempt to provide a rationale for why a candidate should stay in the race when it appears that it’s going to be mathematically impossible for them to become the nominee,” he said. “I don’t know a single superdelegate who has said they’re going to switch. I don’t expect that anyone will.”