Democratic Party Votes to Reinstate…Democracy
Until 1968, Democratic Party bosses picked its candidates. In 1968, Eugene McCarthy, who had won the most primaries, was pushed aside when party bosses picked Humphrey. As we all know, Nixon beat Humphrey, which began our long national nightmare which ended in scandal and Nixon’s resignation in 1974. In 1970, the party became democratic by giving the votes to the rank and file, but in 1972, the party nominated McGovern, who was slaughtered in 49 states by Nixon. That’s when party bosses seized power again by inventing superdelegates, who had an outsized role in selecting candidates. That outsized role was used to the extreme in 2016, which resulted in the second long national nightmare, the Trump era. That happened when Hillary erected a huge wall of money and used that money to vacuum up almost all super delegates before the primaries even started in 2016, she abused Democratic Party rules to destroy the fundamental principle of our country – democracy.
Since the 2016 electoral disaster, the left side of the party has been at war with party leaders to get rid of superdelegates. This weekend, they won a major battle when the DNC voted to reform the superdelegate system. That reform took away the vote of superdelegates in the first vote in a contested convention. What that means is that if a candidate has enough votes to win the nomination without the superdelegates, they can vote. If it hasn’t been decided yet, they have to wait on the sidelines on the first ballot. This change, while not pure reform, is huge. No longer can another candidate, like Hillary, use the party structure to suppress the vote of the rank and file before the primaries even start. Because of this reform, party bosses like Donna Brazile, who had opposed the change are not happy. Leaders like Karen Carter Peterson of Louisiana were outraged that their power to destroy democracy was being taken away. Addressing the rules committee she said, “Are you telling me that I’m going to go to a convention, after my 30 years of blood sweat and tears for this party, that you’re going to take away my right?” Well, Karen, if you mean your right to force your will over the voters, the answer is that you’re goddam right we’re taking away your right. You abused that right, so now the people have taken that privilege away from you. Welcome to democracy.
How do you like ‘dem apples?
There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.
One minor quibble: between jungle primaries, and the ability for non-Democrats to vote for Democratic Party candidates, we need some protections to make sure that, say, TeaPartiers in safe Republican districts can’t vote for the Democratic candidate least likely to succeed.
Remember the guy who won a Democratic Primary even though he had no campaign offices? The one whose primary victory was fueled by Republican cross-over voters, and was subsequently crushed in the general election?
I don’t have a problem with registered Democratic Party voters choosing their candidates – I have a big problem with allowing folks who hate the Democratic Party sabotaging the process. If you want a voice in how the Democratic Party is run – register as a Democrat.
1A good, little, first step.
2And the candidate needs to be a Democrat. That was part of the ‘wall’ you keep bitching about.
And, in fact, he has now backed away from his promise YET AGAIN.
The changes are good. I find it telling that you aren’t addressing ALL of them.
3I am more than a little of tired of the trope that “Hillary and the DNC STOLE the nomination” shows up time and again in places that it shouldn’t. (or anywhere) She “vacuumed up a wall of money and all the superdelegates.”
No. Not even close. Hillary and Bill knew the system that was in place. So did Bernie. However the Clintons worked with the superdelegates personally for years. Helped them with their campaigns. Helped them with their issues. For years.
Bernie registers as a Democrat a short time before he declares candidacy. So all those superdelegates were suddenly supposed to drop their support for Hillary (who got more votes in the “rank and file” primary) and vote Bernie because … why?
And even worse, you now embraced the idea that the direct result of this is we got Trump.
No. Not even close. Hillary was torpedoed by Comey and was fragged by foreign social media ops. Evidence shows that those same covert PR opts pushed the EXACT SAME NARRATIVE you are pushing because it would help Bernie and hurt Hillary who they hated for substantial reasons. “Hillary STOLE …”
Plays good in the media doesn’t it. You apparently buy it when you shouldn’t.
Go ahead and reform the Party primary voting rules. Systems like that can and should be updated regularly. But if you want to go pretend that the party primary system was the reason that Trump is president then you are solving the wrong problem.
P.S. I would have loved to have Bernie as president more than Hillary. But it just wasn’t going to happen.
4A purely symbolic gesture.
If it helps reconcile the Sanders wing to working within the party, it’s a complete win/win.
It’s zero cost, because in fact the superdelegates have never once played a significant role in choosing the candidate, have never once done anything but follow the preference of the primary and caucus voters.
Far more important was that six states are switching from inherently undemocratic caucuses to primaries. THAT is significant reform.
Unfortunately, Iowa will still come first. I’m an expatriate Iowan, and I think the days when Iowa-first was a good thing died when Robert Ray left the governorship in 1983.
5Full Disclosure: I’m from a caucus state so I’m admittedly unfamiliar with how delegates are selected in primary states, therefore what I say may not be applicable under those circumstances. I’ve been an elected delegate to the National Convention has my husband and so have several of my friends and a few students that I have shepherded along. I’ve also served as an assistant in the Missouri room at the Convention.
Most people are clueless as to how the process works, given how knowledgeable the folks here are, I hope I can be forgiven for reviewing it for the few who may not be. Anyone who is an interested registered vote who lives in the cacucus district shows up at a large gathering place and registers. The leaders of the caucus settle folks down and explain thafolks representing candidates will give speeches, then each of these reps will go to separate areas and if you support them you’ll be asked to join their group. The delegates and alternates will then be divided accordingly. Each individual caucus then selects the people from their group that they wish to represent them. Those folks then go on to the next level (wash, rinse, repeat), until they arrive at the Congressional Level (where a few people are selected to go to the national convention or the state level where the final selections for National Delegates is made.
The process during this time looks like this: the person with the most people gets the greatest number of delegates. The people with the most votes to represent the group get to go on as delegates to the next level. So, if you organize like a son of a gun, convince all your friends and neighbors to show up on a work night, often in lousy (January-March), weather at the super convenient time of 6 or 7 PM, and get them to commit to hanging out without food or beverages in a large, noisy room with people they don’t know for 3-5 hours and then voting for you or a slate of delegates you’ve negotiated with then you too can gain the honor of doing the same damn thing over again 3-4 more times until you actually become a delegate do get to go to the National Convention.
Here is my point. Most of the people at the first level are absolutely clueless as to how these things work. They don’t take the time to read the rules, they aren’t familiar with parliamentary procedure and honestly why should they be?Ultimately it is up to the Presidential Candidates organizers to understand these things or to people who want to become delegates to do so.
But, here is the key thing, the rules are there, they are voted upon, and the times and locations of the caucuses are posted, if you give hoot and if you organize you can be a delegate. But let’s just for a minute say that someone, I’m going to say Beto is in your little group and the time comes to select someone to represent you at the next level, who do you think your little group will select, you or Beto? My guess is that the person with the name recognition wins. So what you effectively get is a whole bunch of super delegates. People like me and I’d wager most of the folks who are members of the Beauty Salon who are informed and politically active on at least some level also don’t have the Congressional and State-wide name recognition to compete against a Beto or a host of other elected folks. Take them out of the mix and the position opens up for a host of other worker bees like Ms Susan, Fenway Fran, and the rest of us whose voices should be heard.
This is my gentle way of saying I like the new rule. I think it addresses the issues posed by Super Delegates without tossing them back in the mix where I can promise you they would effectively unseat worker bees.
6This is good, but somewhere in El Jefe’s talk about not suppressing the vote of the people in the primaries I suddenly got a vision of Trump. I really hope the Dem voters are not insane or gullible enough to vote in somebody like that, but if they ever do, I’d like there to be a way to stop it. But who decides who needs to be stopped…? I admit it’s not an easy question and any answer I can think of at the moment is subject to abuse.
7Not saying I liked the old system, mind you. I’m just raising a question.
8If I were there, I’d push for the following:
1) Anyone seeking funding from the national committee to pursue nomination for President must:
a) be a registered Democrat for at least three years prior to the date of the first primary;
b) if a member of a legislature, must caucus with Democrats.
c) survive an independent background check funded and done by the national committee
d) provide to the national committee the last three years of federal and state tax returns, as well as each year of the campaign (also include access to the preparer of the returns).
2) Push to encourage similar practices at the state level.
3) I think it’s important that any candidate for President to through the process of obtaining a security clearance. That would provide an independent view of the candidates’ financial position, behaviors, associations, etc. This would mean a change to existing laws (you can’t get a clearance simply because you want one), so the DNC would have to push Democratic legislators to initiate and pass such a bill allowing a *voluntary* assessment.
9Thanks to ALAN and DEB for their cogent analyses and comments. I, too, and beyond tired of hearing how Hillary “stole” the nomination from Bernie. She won the most delegates in the primaries and caucuses. By a long shot. Plus, she raised money and supported Dem candidates for years. Bernie? Not so much.
I am also concerned about open primaries where non-Dems are allowed to vote. Too many chances for shenanigans. This is an old story here in DC, where winning the Dem primary is tantamount to election. You have to be registered as a Dem to vote in them.
10I always find it amazing that every time I bring up Hillary and the way she corrupted the system, readers immediately leap to the conclusion that I’m saying she stole the nomination from Bernie. I have NEVER said that. The giant wall of money kept out other good candidate(s) like Biden who would’ve beat His Orangeness in a walk. She stacked the DNC full of her operatives, and negotiated the JFA WITH HERSELF to give her the advantage. Would she have won the nom without cheating? We’ll never know, will we?
11Any rule or proc that provides purchase for non-Democrats — like Bernie Sanders, Greenies, etc. dilutes our strength relative to actually winning the real election.
Amelioration of the impact of superdelegates is one thing … but these rules kick the chickens out of the hen house and yield the floor to the skunk.
12If the “skunk” is the one who wins the most votes on an even playing field, then what’s wrong with the “Rose”?
13I agree with El Jefe.
14Hillary did not steal the nominations but she and her allies tailored procedures etc to favor Hillary.
Not cheating but a little too much gamemanship by half, and sadly she probably didn’t need to do so to win the nomination and in the end it reflected badly upon her.
Glad to see superdelegates being placed on the sidelines, would rather see them eliminated completely but take what we can get.
Biden may well have beaten Hillary for the nomination, but, HE DIDN’T RUN! Hillary managed to “stack the deck” because of the amount of money she raised, but also because of the IOU’s she collected over the years. It’s called “Politics”. And, she had to negotiate through all the hate from Dems. I had to “unfriend” more than one person on Facebook who had nothing but anti-Hillary propaganda right up until she lost to the Orange Moron.
I wonder how those folks are feeling now?
I, for one, am sick unto death of rehashing the last election. None of it is helpful.
15What BarbinDC said. How about this, in 2020, the D’s nominate Johnny Unbeatable for President? We know he’ll win, because, well, he’s Johnny Unbeatable, the guy who always wins.
16The superdelegates (and isn’t that a moment of truth) always were an illiberal fix. The sole salutory effect of this reform is that if they wade in on the second ballot to turn the tide against the more left leaning candidate, the transparency of what has happened will sink the fix in the general and deservedly so.
17I spose I hear a different drum here on this post.
A candidate for party nomination should play be the party rules existing at the time of nomination. Unless he or she can convince the party to change the rules to be more advantageous to him or her than to his or her opponents. Once the nomination is in hand the nominee can politic playing the existing election laws and etc to win the November election.
Friends, I see politics at every level as a contact sport. Not some momma’s boys’ picnic. Moreso today than ever before your Democrat candidate’s skin must be thick and their knuckles bare and calloused.
18I always find it amazing that every time Hillary El Jefe says she corrupted the system and totally rehashed and renames the 2016 election. I’m with BarbinDC. Time to move on to the current election and 2020.
I’m not a fan of superdelegates and I do prefer closed primaries. I want to support AlaninAustin’s suggestions, except that I’d go back farther. Digital trails are forever.
19Ditto AlleninAustin.
We have a tea party darling as Lt Gov in Texas. He owns radio stations. He is also ambitious. When he first ran for Texas senate, his very BFF filed to run for the same position as a Democrat. When the question come up regarding his continued radio program during the election he said, ask my opponent. If he says it gives me an unfair advantage, I’ll not continue with my daily program. Well guess what his Democratic opponent said.
I was was once very pissed at a county commissioner. He was gonna win so bigly, he was always unopposed. I filed to run against him just as a learning experience. The Harris County Democratic party didn’t know me from Adam’s house cat. Carl Whitmarsh grilled me like no body’s business. He knew what I thought about everything. Too bad Carl was not in the office the day Dan Patrick’s friend filed.
With the Rs funding the Greens, we need to be vigilant. On every level.
20Jefe –
The idea is to win … WE have an obligation to do so. Everytime crooks win … enough of the democracy that populates our republic is rubbed off the vehicle to permanently damage our culture of law and order.
Government – to survive must be stronger than the greatest human force that seeks to circumvent it. As much as Ms./Sec. Clinton is ‘soiled’ by your opinion of her and the way you have spun facts [and … you may be correct, but spun they are] she would not have us where trumplthinskin has put[in] us today.
The greatest asset this site has is conversational discussion of some extremely exotic perceptions of the operations of government. All discussion here is to re-enforce the role of law … not order in the many levels of government covered by our Constitution as it lives and breathes as language changes and technology advances.
We have no fight, but do have a difference of
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