Democratic Party to Keep Controversial Superdelegates

[IndianaGreen]

Keeping superdelegates is an insurance policy against any rank-and-file insurgency. Remember how Hillary tried to used superdelegates to subvert the popular will? Now the tables are turned! Not democratic at all! BTW, the GOP has no superdelegates, and they are the fascist party.

Democratic Party to Keep Controversial Superdelegates

A reform effort to take away party bigwigs’ presidential-nominating power suffers a setback.

by Colin Woodard
August 02, 2010

Before 2008, your average American might not have known what a Democratic Party superdelegate was. But that year these mysterious party insiders became a feature of the daily news cycle as the fierce presidential-primary battle swept across the country. In a neck-and-neck race, the party confronted the very real possibility that these unelected delegates to its national convention might support Hillary Clinton in sufficient numbers to give her the nomination, despite Barack Obama’s slim but indisputable lead among pledged delegates, who are assigned by the results of state primaries and caucuses. The prospect of Democratic insiders taking the nomination away from the first African-American to qualify for it threatened to seriously damage party unity, and prompted a move to reform the Democrats’ nomination process.

But recently a party committee quietly tossed out a plan to take nominating power away from the superdelegates—former presidents, current senators and Congress members, members of the Democratic National Committee, and other party luminaries such as labor leaders. The superdelegates currently have automatic seats at the convention and are free to vote for whichever presidential candidate they please.

After Obama secured the party’s nomination, he urged the DNC to create a commission to examine superdelegates’ influence and other shortcomings in the nomination process. The Democratic Change Commission (whose members included Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, and House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina) took a tough stance. Superdelegates, it recommended, should be required to vote for a candidate assigned to them, based on the results of their state’s caucus or primary.

<snip>

But the rules committee took a dim view of this proposal. While endorsing recommendations to dilute the superdelegates’ influence (mostly by increasing the number of ordinary delegates), it quietly nixed the redefinition of their voting powers at it July 10 meeting. How quietly? Enough that even some members of the change commission hadn’t yet heard about it when NEWSWEEK spoke to them last week.

“That’s going to be disappointing for a number of grassroots delegates across the country who worked very hard on this,” said one commissioner, Rebecca Prozan, an assistant district attorney in San Francisco. “We need to make sure that the candidates are out convincing voters in the cornfields of Iowa, the South, and Latino communities in Arizona, not spending time convincing superdelegates.”

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/02/democratic-party-to-keep-controversial-superdelegates.html

[LiberalFighter]

1. That is not true. They just don't call or allow the media to call them superdelegates.

Source: Green Papers
Monday 1 September - Thursday 4 September 2008: 39th Republican National Convention, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota

The 39th REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION will have a total of 2,380 delegates, with 1,191 (a majority) necessary in order for a Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate to be nominated.

The rules for the 2008 Republican National Convention call for the following formula for determining the number of delegates:

* For the 50 states:
o 10 at-large delegates for each state
o 3 delegates for each congressional district in the state
o "Bonus" delegates are awarded to states which cast their electoral vote for the 2004 Republican presidential nominee (George W. Bush), such states receiving 4.5 delegates plus 60 percent of their 2004 electoral vote.
o States are also given one "bonus" delegate for each of the following:
+ a Republican United States Senator;
+ a delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives which is at least half Republican;
+ a Republican Governor;
+ a house of the state's Legislature controlled by Republicans or in which the Republican membership has increased by at least 25 percent of the total number of seats;
+ Republican control of both houses of the state's Legislature.
* 6 at large delegates for American Samoa
* 16 at large delegates for the District of Columbia
* 6 at large delegates for Guam
* 20 at large delegates for Puerto Rico
* 6 at large delegates for the Virgin Islands
* For all 50 states, American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands - 3 party leaders: the national committeeman, the national committee woman, and the chairman of the state Republican Party

[SunsetDreams]

2. lol thanks

[Political Tiger]

3. Since there aren't many Democrats left on DU I doubt if this post

will get much attention.

[Stoic]

4. Please tell me what you mean.

How do you define "Democrats"?

[scheming daemons]

5. You're right... DU has been overrun by Greens. Democrats are becoming a minority here

[TheKentuckian]

6. Gotta keep an Ace or two up the sleeve to ensure orthodoxy

The voter veto is most certainly anti-democratic and a nasty fail safe in case the big wigs endorsements, money, add other forms of influence were overridden to yield a non-corporate owned and approved nominee.