2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumSanders’s campaign manager previewed a very undemocratic strategy for the Democratic primary
But later that same night, Sanders's campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, went on MSNBC and said that the campaign's plan is to win the election by persuading superdelegates to dump Hillary Clinton.
This isn't the first time the Sanders campaign has previewed this strategy. They began talking about it in March, arguing that if they could finish the primaries strong, then even if they trailed Clinton in delegates, they could use their strong poll numbers, tremendous small-donors fundraising, and general momentum to persuade superdelegates to switch sides and hand them the nomination.
And fair enough. It's an incredibly unlikely stratagem superdelegates are the very definition of the Democratic Party establishment, which is why Clinton has an enormous advantage among them but it's completely within the rules of the game.
It is, however, a bit unseemly for Sanders to blast New York's primary for barring independent voters only to have his campaign manager go out and say they're explicitly planning to use superdelegates to overturn the will of the voters.
But what turns this into an unusually difficult argument for Sanders is that, early in the race, Sanders's supporters feared this is how Clinton would steal the election, and so they mobilized their supporters to demand that the superdelegates abide by the will of the voters. Even today, some Sanders supporters (wrongly) think Clinton's lead is the unfair result of superdelegates ignoring the voters and backing her campaign.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/19/11465392/bernie-sanders-superdelegates
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)CorkySt.Clair
(1,507 posts)BreakfastClub
(765 posts)It also makes it clear that Barnie isn't really a democrat. He just wants to win, and he's using the democratic party for those aims. His campaign guy is delusional if he thinks the superdelegates will choose BS even though Hillary will have many more delegates and the popular vote. Good luck with that, Bern. The superdelegates are party loyalists. They're not going to switch to a man who was a socialist democrat for decades over a woman who has supported the democratic party her entire adult life.
w4rma
(31,700 posts)Response to RandySF (Original post)
Post removed
RandySF
(58,908 posts)You go on with your revolutionary self.
killbotfactory
(13,566 posts)RandySF
(58,908 posts)I'm going to enjoy watching him getting his ass kicked all over again next week.
are.you.sure
(6 posts)Superdelegates represent the will of the various state democratic party corporations' selected representatives, while the will of the voters is represented by pledged delegates bound to votes in each of the various democratic primaries, no?
Now that the 2016 NYS democratic primary has taken place, we can reasonably state that each of the 44 NYS superdelegates represents the equivelant of nearly 7,790 actual democratic primary votes, with all 44 superdelegates representing the equivelant of nearly 342,782 actual democratic primary votes.
But don't fixate on those numbers, because no matter how many votes would have been cast in this primary, the 44 superdelegates would represent the equivelant of nearly 18% of the actual vote and each superdelegate would represent the equivelant of 1/44 of that 18%.
In turn, despite one person, one vote being the moral underpinning of our elections, the democratic party superdelegates render the actual democratic party member's vote equivelant to one person, 0.82 votes in NYS.
Superdelegates can only be said to represent the will of the voters in a very semantical sense because voters registering with the party either wittingly or unwittingly agree to have their one person, one vote dilluted by 18% (in NYS) and let party superdelegates decide who to back in exchange for affiliation with the party and the right to participate in the primary in addition to general elections.