is the purpose of the super-delegates AND the Electoral College system ... as undemocratic as it is, they both serve as a fail-safe.

Regarding Super Delegates, if only given the choice of all or nothing, I would take the latter and abolish the system. In my view there are far too many of them if nothing else, too high a proportion of the delegates to the Democratic Convention aren't chosen as such by voters to support the candidate of their choice. I waver though as to whether some significantly trimmed back SD system might yet be appropriate. SD's only can play that potential fail-safe function if no candidate wins a majority of the pledged delegates anyway. That is relevant this year and it was in 2008 also, but not in 2004 or 2000 for example. One rule change I know that I would like to suggest is a requirement that Super Delegates (certainly non-elected officials anyway) not be allowed to voluntarily pledge support to any candidate prior to the actual Convention. It's a technical thing but it would effect the campaign narratives. It would establish that the role of the Super Delegate is to enter a Convention unpledged and open to any new arguments offered at the Convention. In practice I assume SD's could express their current preference in a candidate at any given time, but the effect of that on media coverage would be to officially remove them from any running count of who is ahead for the nomination in accumulated delegates, since the most that could be said about any SD then would be that they were leaning one way or another. It's seems like a small thing, but I think it would have important psychological and tactical implications.

I think in the current political era a full presidential campaign flushes out pretty much all the dirty laundry by the time election day roles around in November so that te fail safe feature of a Electoral College with actual individuals meeting after the election free to vote as they want is obsolete and, yes, undemocratic.

the BS cheerleaders said early on that it would be going against the "will of the voters" and it would tear the Democratic Party apart. That was, of course, when they thought that BS might win the PDs and vote and that Secretary Clinton would "steal" the election with the Superdelegates.

Now, it's the only way the BS cheerleaders have of winning the election and they have decided to flush their morals down the toilet because of their thirst for power.

The bottom line is the people advancing this argument think they are better than the people of color and older women who have given her her overwhelming popular vote and pledged delegate lead, and consequently believe their votes should be disregarded, however reticent they are to admit it.

This begs the question. Why have elections in the first place? These people know what is best for the rest of us.

I'll leave it at that regarding your assertion that some people think they are better than others here, except to say that not all questions are best addressed solely by looking through a lens looking for prejudice and discrimination.

As to both your question and the point raised by the person you responded to, my position on the question of Super Delegates has never been simply, um, black and white. I have always been clear though that there are too many of them, as I replied elsewhere above. And like I said there I think it is wrong and undemocratic for any candidate to said to be entering the primaries before a single vote is cast with, for example, a 400 vote lead. That, I believe, has always been a vapid criticism of the system by Sanders supporters.

I have written about this on DU long before now. Under anything approaching normal circumstances I believe that whatever candidate (in a two way race) is leading in pledged delegates should get the nomination. That goes for Hillary also. The main reason why I see any wiggle room in that is because, unlike a normal election, this is an election for a single position for which voting goes on over a six month period. It is not like a presidential election, or even a dog catcher election, where there is a set election day around which all voting revolves. For example one early advantage Hillary had this time that had nothing pro or con to do with race or gender, is that in early contests she overwhelming won the support of voters who had as their highest concern beating the Republicans. Hillary was strongly regarded highest then in that regard. Fair enough, but exit polling showed her winning a significant number of votes from people who agreed with Sanders more on issues, because of that electability argument. Since then though more and more national polls have shown Sanders running far stronger than Clinton against Trump. Would that have swayed more voters who agreed with him on issues to Sanders had that been shown earlier? Some yes, who knows how many, but with proportionate allocation of delegates it could have won Sanders more in those same states had they voted later.

Early voting states have a clearly disproportionately major say in electing nominees regardless of their racial make up etc. because they establish early momentum, which drive media coverage, fund raising, national polls etc. That's fine, someone has to go first. The only thing late voting states get in return is a chance to take into consideration information that may not have been widely known, if at all, five or six months earlier. If you take that principle to one end of the spectrum, were one of our candidates to get indicted for a serious crime, or fully exposed for serious corruption or whatever, before the final states vote, yeah, I can understand Super Delegates looking at how that effects the support for each candidate as measured by the later contests once those bombshells had landed.

Bottom line, I think Super Delegates should be loathe to select anyone who did not win the contest for pledged delegates, but there may be exceptional instances where that loathsome task is called for. The point of my OP is that should her continued viability as a candidate be called into question, Hillary sure as hell would be facing a jury of her peers in the current Super Delegates. Were the tables turned that would not be the case for Sanders. The Super Delegates will not strip Hillary of the nomination without very compelling reasons to do so.

Washington DC would be perfect for a very early slot in the rotation. It helps counterbalance Iowa and NH in every demographic, yet it is compact enough to allow for retail politics which still give lesser known candidate a shot at being competitive.

Look, I don't think anything you quoted from Kos touches on the points I made, they are generic and not limited to this contest. What if a candidate surged way ahead in early contests and then only near the end of the schedule did information come out that cst that person in a negative potentially racist light. Would African American voters accept an argument that the will of the early voters, of whatever color, needed to be respected and that person nominated anyway if they were ahead in pledged delegates?

I will go so far as to suggest that it is racist to suggest that minority voters are more robotic in their loyalty than any other voters. Just because they voted one way at one point in time does not mean that they would be closed to weighing new information that was unavailable to them when they first voted.

Again, the main point of my OP was to state that no way will the Super Delegates steel an election from Hillary. A large number of them are themselves minorities to say nothing of also being Clinton supporters. I just stated on another reply that based on how things stand today, there is no justification for Super Delegates to consider overturning a pledged delegate lead for her. But it isn't July yet. For that group of Super Delegates to turn against Clinton something pretty dramatic would have to be going on, and if they end up doing just that some very serious and troubling business would be their sole reason for doing so, not some false narrative about wanting to disenfranchise women and minorities.

I say this, from the bottom of my heart, if Senator Sanders would have defeated Secretary Clinton in the pledged delegate count I would have been crestfallen, but I would have licked my wounds and not come up with ways to overturn the will of the people.

I am sure the GOP isn't happy with Trump and Kasich and Rubio were stronger general election candidates, according to polling, but they were loathe to discount the will of their voters. Why should we?

I don't expect the SD's to overturn a Clinton pledged delegate lead, I expect her to win with one and I am planning to support her if she does. It would take a highly unusual and frankly frightening turn of events for them to even consider any other option. I do not cheer lead for that to occur, and I know that group of delegates would never do that unless they believed they had no real choice.

The GOP seems to have made a decision that their voters elected him and now it is incumbent upon them to support him, no matter what.

I do find it sad that Marco Rubio is supporting him after previously saying he was unfit for office. Sometimes ambition comes with too high a cost. To support someone you know to be a generally bad person would seem to me to be too high a cost. I don't know if that means I could never be a politician or never be a Republican.

I hope Kasich doesn't disappoint me. He seems to be more than than the sum of his ambition.

You are correct that some people do not act in good faith but to say that as a class the motive for the opinion is that they "think they are better than the people of color and older women" is untrue in general and specifically so at DU and good Democrats.

Many at DU that express that argument are people of color and older women.

You may not like that many good Democrats of long standing do not support Hillary Clinton for valid reasons.

Some folks have cult of personality blindness.

from getting nominated. I believe they were added after 1972, to prevent another candidate who appeals to the most liberal primary voters but is "too liberal to get elected" from winning the nomination.

Oh, the irony!

A little while ago, I posted a theory about how Bernie may be staying in because someone on the inside, probably Secretary Kerry or someone else at State, has sent a signal to the Bernie campaign that he should.

I've been curious about what sort of inside info about the investigation(s) might be driving decisions.

be in the know?

Having followed Kerry closely for over a decade, he really is NOT someone who encourages or condones leaks. This was true in all his investigations and in his Presidential campaign. Though there have been rumours over the years, he never allowed a leak of who was under consideration for VP.

That said, there are several more obvious reasons.

1) He is doing far better than ever anticipated and is still not mathematically eliminated in terms of getting 50% of the pledged delegates. It is, of course, very improbable. Note that Jerry Brown and Hillary Clinton both hung on at the point they were unlikely to get 50% of the pledged delegates. Doing that, could be seen as a slap in the face of their supporters in the last states.

2) As long as he is in, he has been more likely to be heard - even when rejected. Had he dropped out in March when they wanted him I doubt that he would have gotten to name 5 people on the platform committee. Consider that Kuchinich stayed in until the convention in 2004 hoping to influence it - even though he had only 40 delegates. There were no real calls for him to concede.

3) Inertia - I heard Howard Dean interviewed back in March explaining that he understood then how it would have been hard for Sanders to drop out then -- as it was for him in similar circumstances. In fact, at the point Dean dropped out, he had won ZERO states - he later won VT and earlier had won the DC primary which was a beauty contest as the later caucus chose the delegates and at the end at the end he had 167.5 delegates. So, if Dean found it hard to stop and not get the attention of being a candidate consider that Sanders has won 21 states and has 1500 delegates - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016

4) You do not need inside leaks to know that the FBI and the two IGs are investigating Clinton. Everyone knows this. If you were in Bernie's position, shocked that he is where he actually is far beyond his wildest dreams when he announced -- you might be waiting for lightening to strike. (In fact, I think that was part of why it took Dean so long to drop out - he, Edwards, and Clark ( whose team actually helped spread the lie) were ALL hoping that John Kerry really did have an affair and hoped that if he did it would knock him out.)

All he would have had to do was say to Devine that Bernie should stay in in the right way.

But I think your points are also spot on about Bernie staying in the race. I expected that he would stay in through the last primary, but I feel like his superdelegates flipping theory is a bit preposterous unless he knows something we don't.

FWIW, I want Bernie to stay in until the last vote is counted.

Re. #4, I don't remember that! I don't even remember any speculation about Kerry having an affair!

I'd say that someone very likely to be under indictment in the very near future and who has just been exposed as a serial liar (with perfect soundbites for attack ads readily available to the opposition) is also something the superdelegate system is supposed to prevent.

That first rationale (preventing someone "too liberal&quot is no longer in operation, since all polling so far indicates that the "too liberal" candidate is markedly stronger in November. The second rationale is very much in force, though.

of the DNC when he signed on to run, too many times it has been explained why there are super delegates and I would think some would be able to explain this to others. They were started to prevent hostile take overs by other parties. After the turmoil in the GOP this year it is very explainable, sometimes there is a need to tilt the results to prevent the results the GOP is having right now.

Now, back to the super delegates, they are equally available to the candidates, Sanders has had many years to establish a relationship with members of congress, more than Hillary has had, count one for Sanders. He should have beat the socks off of Hillary with the relationships he established over the years, it did not seem to happen. Now why did it not happen?

policies that won't bust the budget, etc.

But it was done under the guise of preventing candidates like Hillary. Ones with potential indictments looming, and scathing reports from the IG being released right before election time.

Lets hope they wise up and serve their real purpose soon.

The only price to the super delegates would be political. I know where there's about 13 million voters that would be (understandably) very upset. How do you think the SDs evaluate this situation?

And to be frank, it Hillary wins the cumulative pledged vote count from the last six months of primaries etc. - even if early voters didn't know some of the same things that later ones might now ponder, it should take a great deal to make SD's side against giving Hillary the nomination. I doubt they will, or as matters stand today on May 28th, neither should they. But if this is the start of a steep downward spiral for Hillary they will be called on to at least reconsider. The point of my OP was that in that case Hillary will have the strong benefit of appealing to a jury of her peers. If even that can't save her under that scenario, her candidacy shouldn't then be saved.

The first caucus was in Iowa and the first primary was in New Hampshire. These sparsely populated and homogeneous states should have been and were the Vermont independent's bailiwick. Imagine if the two first states to vote were populous and heterogeneous Florida and Texas.

With all due respect your argument is a thinly camouflaged effort to overturn the will of the voters ,many of whom are people of color and older women, who have given Secretary Clinton a 3,000, 000 popular vote and 300 pledged delegate lead.

The full range of possibilities is being discussed openly on national media. To the extent that I am making predictions I expect Hillary to get through this and become our nominee. I just answered some of you other points in a post upstream. But I'll say this, if you think that the 450 or so Super Delegates who are now supporting Clinton would vote against her as our nominee without a very compelling reason to do so (certainly not to disenfranchise minorities and women when most of them are minorities and/or women) I would call that crazy.

Yes what KOS wrote triggered my OP, because a coup at the Convention is impossible. The establishment does not want to overthrow itself

They had better have a darn good reason. And it must be clearer and better stated than your argument which is just so much mumble. They will be severely judged on any decision that overrules the voters. This is a Democracy and we're extremely sensitive about our votes being ignored.

In 10 days we have our presumptive nominee no matter how much sanders whines about it...

This is the opposite of what yall was saying when yall thought he was gonna get more delegates. Now yall making up any excuse. I see we reached bargaining. Next: acceptance

My views on this entire matter of pledged delegate leads and Super Delegate votes have bee long established and clearly and repeatedly stated on DU over the last several months, and clearly not what you appear to presume they are or have been. In fact I expressed the same views here back in 2008. I was attacked for propping up Hilary back then.

Read back at how upset the berners were at the very idea of superdelegates givng Hill the nom if Bernie won more pleged delegates. Now? They want them to do exactly the opposite of what they wanted when they thought they'd win. You guys are looking worse and worse.

But if you can misread mine you might misread others also. So show me where I denied that if something happened in the last month of two of the primary contest that caused Bernie to be plagued by any serious ever deepening scandal such that his favorable ratings suddenly dropped below the basement, allowing Clinton to become overwhelmingly stronger than Bernie in the polls, that I thought Super Delegates should take none of that into consideration.

I've long conceded that whoever wins the most pledged delegates should get the nomination barring extraordinary circumstances.

I can't see Hillary supporters just accepting this without a fight.

If it looks anything like how reality looks right now those Super Delegates will be supporting Hillary at the Convention. Whatever it would have to take to change their minds will be apparent to Hillary's current supporters under that scenario at that time also.

that denying the nomination to the winning candidate would ensure Sanders the presidency.

If these same people think that Hillary's voters would find it acceptable and would vote for Sanders in November, then you are going to be sorely disappointed. The outrage will be such that it would guarantee a Trump win in November.

You really want to see a "revolution"? Then deny the person who is far ahead in pledged delegates, and the popular vote too, her hard earned place as the standard bearer of the Democratic party.

The Super Delegates agree with you. They would not vote against Hillary at the convention unless something happens to convince them that the risk of denying Hillary the nomination is less than the risk of giving it to her. End of story.

Sec Clinton that they would not give her the needed votes, and that she would therefore be denied the nomination, she would then release all of her pledged delegates.

They would then vote for any person they deem best to carry the banner forward, along with the Supers.

I would not automatically assume that person would be Sen Sanders -

It's hard to imagine any circumstances under which it would happen. Not the emails, and not the polls against Trump.

If it's revealed that, let's say, that she murdered someone in cold blood or ran a child trafficking ring, then sure, they would be totally justified on denying her the nomination. At that point I think she would simply resign instead.

But that kind of thing is so far-fetched, it's dumb to even think about it.

The scenario Bernie wants, and has talked about, is that the superdelegates look at the polls and worry about the emails, and decide to go with Bernie instead. If that happened, it would be a coup of sorts, but that's not going to happen.

Delegates and in the judgement of the Super Delegates were to endorse the other candidate then the Super Delegates in fact did what the function of the super delegates are designed. If we had a candidate like a Trump we would have a safety net with super delegates.

they'd be doing the country and the party a big favor.