I've read quite a bit lately from people who are suggesting that superdelegates are some sort of perversion of an otherwise democratic nominating process. It is, frankly, a bunch of faux populist claptrap that should be cut off at the knees.
This is not to say that superdelegates aren't undemocratic. They are, to a certain extent. But that doesn't mean they are any more undemocratic than many of the other parts of the nominating process. The focus on superdelegates is simply an effort to pit the "common voter" against the "party elite" using specious arguments and to twist support for one candidate as somehow damning.
The primary argument is that if we remove suprtdelegates that the process will be somehow democratic. John Arivosis ran this one up the flagpole yesterday:
Our system is a joke. They ought to split the Superdelegates now, 50-50 and be done with it.
Of course, that totally ignores the caucuses in Iowa where the byzantine rules give some people more of a vote than others. You can vote for Candidate A in your home town only to be told they didn't meet a threshold and you have to revote. You revote for Candidate B and then someone else takes your vote up to the next level. But at that level Candidate B doesn't meet the threshold so your vote is shifted, without your input, to Candidate C!
And it totally ignores that in some caucus states, like Nevada, the caucus results don't accurately reflect the delegate count. You can win the caucuses, win the popular vote and still have fewer delegates once they are handed out months later.
And it totally ignores that in some states only previously registered Democrats can vote in the primary, while in others independents can register with the party at the polls, while in others anyone from any party can show up and vote in the Democratic primary. That means an individual Democrat's vote in a purely partisan state is worth more than an individual Democrat's vote where anyone can jump in and diffuse the impact of Democrats.
And it totally ignores that in some states delegates are given proportionately by county, others by the whole state, others by legislative districts. That means a voter in a statewide apportionment state has less impact on the race than one in a county apportionment state, because a third tier candidate could potentially win a county but not hit the radar in a state.
And the Wall Street Journal, no friend of the Democratic Party, has this to say:
Here's a nightmare for the Democrats: The party's bigwigs, rather than its voters, may end up choosing the presidential nominee.
Do they mean like in the Iowa caucuses where the party elite set up such bizarre rules that lawyers are called in to figure them out? Or in Nevada where polls are placed in some places of business but not others?
And it's simply not true that the voters are ignored in such a scenario. There are more than enough delegates in the primary and caucuses to deliver a winning hand to any single candidate, but if the voters decide not to deliver that hand then who is supposed to choose?
Why not the members of Congress and Governors and duly elected party leaders? Why shouldn't these party leaders have a significant say in deciding who will represent a seriously split party that can't pick a candidate through the existing process?
The voters had months and many bites at the apple, had the chance to donate and phone bank and volunteer and vote and cajole their neighbors for months to pick a candidate. Now it is a "nightmare" that party leaders have to figure out what to do when these voters couldn't come to a consensus on a candidate?
Would it be better without superdelegates? Suppose these 800 party leaders and top elected officials have no vote at the convention. The delegates then get to select based on their own desires. They are no longer beholden to the voters who sent them to convention after a first ballot, and can go wherever they please.
This is democratic? No more so than superdelegates are.
In short the entire nominating process is unfair and undemocratic. The rules change from state to state, allowing different levels of participation and enfranchisement. A brokered convention without superdelegates would be no more democratic than one with superdelegates. Any suggestion that the superdelegates are some sort of perversion that defeats an otherwise democratic process is just silly, because the entire process is already perverse.
The people who make these arguments are either media types who just want to fan the flames of faux-populism whether it's accurate or not, or supporters of a candidate who is falling behind on the super-delegate count.
If you want to criticize how we pick our nominee, great. I think we should nominate our candidate based on a straight popular vote. Let's change the whole system for the next time we get to this.
But please don't pretend that the part of the process your candidate is losing is the only unfair or undemocratic issue at hand. It's not good for the party, and it's not good for our candidates.