...and away with the superdelegates

Why should the Democratic presidential nominating contest go all the way to the August convention? There is really no good reason, considering the last primary is in June. The idea of choosing a party’s candidate in a country that purports to be a democracy should not be complicated – just nominate the person who gets the most votes from citizens who go to the polls or caucuses. Instead, somehow, the Democratic Party has inserted so many rules and intricacies into the process that there are a number of ways to subvert the will of the people and nominate the loser of the popular vote.

So why won’t the contest be over in June? Because this year the millions of votes that take place before the convention will scarcely matter. This year the votes of 796 people are the ones that will really count.

The Democratic Party’s superdelegates have gone largely unnoticed in past years, when the nominations have been wrapped up long before the convention, so voting against the people’s choice would have been essentially fruitless. But this year could be different. If Hillary Clinton pulls through in Texas and Ohio on March 4, the delegate count might be so close in June that superdelegate votes will be the only way for one of the two candidates to get the 2,025 delegates needed to capture the nomination.

The superdelegate voting bloc, or Democratic Party insiders who can vote for whomever they want at the convention despite the popular vote or the vote of their constituents, sounds like a reasonable concept. Created in 1982, they were designed to protect party voters from themselves. The superdelegates were given the final say after all the primaries were over, in case the people chose someone who they deem unelectable, or someone these party insiders didn’t want to see running the country. But there is a serious flaw in the logic – do Democratic leaders really think the party’s voters are going to come out enthusiastically to the polls in November for a candidate they didn’t really want, for a candidate who got the nomination only when the party elite played a trump card? Superdelegates act as parents, telling voters, “You can nominate whomever you want, as long as we approve your choice.” It is so inherently undemocratic that it’s shocking Democrats have gotten away with it for more than 25 years.

But never before has the absurdity of superdelegates been so stark. In previous years they have operated much like the Electoral College – essentially going in the way of the popular vote and therefore not garnering enough attention to warrant a demand for change. But this year, with the Republicans’ having already essentially chosen their nominee, the national spotlight is on the Democratic Party’s nominating system, and it’s not a flattering illumination. Why is it that when the Republican voters have spoken and been heard, when they have a candidate the people wanted, the Democratic voters are waiting to see if they will be stifled, knowing that party bosses must approve or deny their choice?

Complicated policies and innuendos of party-elite rule are turn-offs to voters. People want a candidate they can reach out and touch, not one who they can only see through a veil of party bosses and insiders who are doing the real choosing. For all the populist chords the Democratic campaign has struck this year, the party shouldn’t discount the little man, the individual voices. Democrats need to adopt a system people are excited about participating in, one people feel like the have an impact on. The party has made so much progress this year – so many people are excited, energized, inspired, and that’s why the are coming the polls in record numbers. All of that will be stripped away if there is even the appearance that party insiders have decided the primary election. The chant of “Yes we can” will technically become “Yes they can,” an invariably less inspiring and empowering slogan.

It’s too late to change the rules this election cycle – to do so would be to nearly admit chaos and failure, not to mention accusations of favoritism by the losing side. But all the attention on superdelegates has serious potential consequences as voters can plainly see the anti-democracy of it all. The nomination of the candidate who lost the popular vote will be a write-off of a significant number of voters in November, and could help give John McCain the presidency, which would long be remembered as one of the darkest days in Democratic Party history. This convention should be like a scientific experiment to prove that superdelegates serve no practical or positive purpose – except, perhaps, to Republicans, who can use the arcane policy to turn off independent voters and even some Democrats.