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Superdelegate

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A Superdelegate is a term refers to a delegate to the Democratic national convention by virtue of holding office or being selected by the party leaders rather than elected through the ordinary processes grassroots primary election and caucus process. Superdelegates are not pledged to any one candidate and are free to vote for any candidate, usually the candidate who has donated the most money to their campaigns.[1].

One fifth of the delegates to the Democratic national convention are superdelegates, essentially giving them veto power over a popular choice in a close race for the presidential nomination[2].

The Democrats adopted this system of superdelegates to to lock out "insurgent candidate" and avert another fiasco like that experienced in 1972, when the purely democratic nomination process produced an unelectable candidate for president, George McGovern.

Hunt Commission

After Ted Kennedy's challenge and President Carter's loss in 1980, Democrats met again for the fourth time in twelve years to re-write nominating and convention procedures[3]. Anticipating a two-way contest in 1984 between Sen. Kennedy and former Vice President Mondale[4], the original point of contention was over bound delegates which Sen. Kennedy wanted to loosen, while the Mondale machine wanted a candidate to be able to go so far as to replace a "disloyal delegate"[5].

The Mondale machine, supported by Chairman Jim Hunt and labor leaders, more importantly wanted to do something about outsiders and New Left “extremists”[6] they felt had taken over the party[7][8][9]. The Mondale and Kennedy machines wanted to do away with portions of the McGovern-Fraser (known as the "reform movement") compromise that had frozen elected government office holders out of the nomination process[10] and paved the way for an "insurgent candidate". The new rules the Democratic National Committee (DNC) adopted didn't just allow or encourage incumbents to return, it guaranteed elected officials seats outside the regular delegate selection process. The Kennedy faction wanted to cut the number of the roughly 800 reserved seats in half[11]. Susan Estrich, who was to manage Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential campaign[12] strenuously objected to the plan, and derisively coined the term "super-delegate", whom she claimed would disproportionately be white males based upon the formula[13]. Nevertheless, the idea became rule, and from its initial inception has only been expanded upon since[14]. The "Old Democrats" had retaken power with a vengeance.

The Hunt Commission (also known as the "counter-reform movement") scrapped the proportional allocation rules from the 1970s in favor of winner-take-all rules. Prior to proportional representation there was the “unit rule”, a delegation had to vote as a unit, now known as “winner-take-all”. McGovern-Fraser scraped the unit rule for affirmative action, or “proportional representation”, rather than actual votes cast. Today’s supposed “unpledged” Superdelegates function as the local bosses whose cronies, that is, “pledged delegates”, earned their status working to elect Superdelegates to public office in previous elections. Together they function as a unit wherein the boss’s favorite carries the majority of delegates from a state.

The winner-take-all ultimately had the unintended affect in 1984 of allowing McGovern's old campaign manager Gary Hart, a challenger for whom the rules were not written, to rack up big delegate wins in late primary states[15].

When Sen. Kennedy decided not to run in 1984, two insurgent candidates appeared, McGovern's 1972 "New Democrat" campaign manager Sen. Gary Hart, and Jesse Jackson who was to be the first African-American to win states in a major party primary election for president. Susan Estrich's words were prophetic: the good old white boy network, including Hart, shot him down.[16]. The rules were written for a two-way contest between establishment insiders--Mondale and Kennedy, not the three-way slugfest between baby boomers, blacks, and the party Old Guard it came to be.

References

  1. ↑ Obama leads Clinton in giving money to superdelegates, Rob Hotakainen - McClatchy Newspapers, March 28, 2008.
  2. ↑ Not So Superdelegates, By Ari Berman Editorial, The Nation, January 31, 2008.
  3. ↑ See Broder, below.
  4. ↑ Bad blood existed between the Humphrey-Mondale and Kennedy machines going back to Hubert Humphrey's 1960 Presidential primary campaign. Humphrey later wrote of the Kennedy machine, "underneath the beautiful exterior there was an element of ruthlessness and toughness I had trouble either accepting or forgetting."
  5. ↑ Democratic party convention rule changes. academic.regis.edu . Delegates must march in lockstep.
  6. ↑ Reforming the Presidential Nomination Process, Steven S. Smith & Melanie J. Springer, p.7, below. www.brookings.edu
  7. ↑ Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden are interesting case studies; by 1980 Fonda was calling herself a "small 'd' democrat" advocating “industrial policy” and “economic democracy” while Hayden was entering the ranks of the “establishment” electoral process through the California Democratic machine. Fonda’s terminology remarkably resembles views espoused by Bernie Sanders, who also began a career in electoral politics outside the Establishment Democratic Party in the early 1980s. Fonda and Hayden became involved in the ‘save the whales’ and Greenpeace movement. By 1979 after the U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam, the Cambodian genocide in which 2 million persons were murdered was well under way, and a popular reaction against the “anti-establishment” New Left peace movement of the 1960s took hold in the United States. Bumper stickers with slogans such as “nuke the whales” became fashionable.
  8. ↑ JANE FONDA OF THE 80'S MELLOWER BUT STILL AN ACTIVIST, By MICHIKO KAKUTANI, New York Times, March 30, 1981.
  9. ↑ See also Russia Iran Disco Suck for a summary of the popular mood in the late 1970s.
  10. ↑ Democratic party rule makers, ARNOLD SAWISLAK, UPI, Jan. 15, 1982.
  11. ↑ Democrats and Unintended Consequences, By David S. Broder, Washington Post, January 17, 1982.
  12. ↑ Estrich and Dukakis are ranking members in the Massachusetts Kennedy machine which tried to resurrect the 1960 alliance and victory with Texas Democrats on the Dukakis/Bentsen ticket.
  13. ↑ A History of 'Super-Delegates' in the Democratic Party, Elaine Kamarck, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, 2016.
  14. ↑ Democratic party convention rule changes, academic.regis.edu , above.
  15. ↑ Reforming the Presidential Nomination Process, Chapter 1 Choosing Presidential Candidates, Steven S. Smith & Melanie J. Springer, eds., Brookings Institute, 2009, pp. 4-8. www.brookings.edu . An excellent and timely synopsis.
  16. ↑ DISPARITY BETWEEN JACKSON'S VOTE AND DELEGATE COUNT VEXES PARTY, By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, New York Times, May 20, 1984; see also New York Times on April 24, May 11, and May 24 of 1984 for articles reporting Jackson's complaint
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