After getting his ass whooped last Tuesday (losing the popular vote by ~764,000 on the day), Bernie Sanders issued a statement saying he was continuing in the race to amass delegates to impact policy at the convention: “This campaign is going to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform.” That was fine. If his supporters wanted to fund that effort, there was no reason for him not to continue fighting for greater influence at the convention. But to win? It seemed as if his campaign’s delusion was over. But alas, that wasn’t the case.
Bernie Sanders predicted Sunday that Hillary Clinton would not win enough pledged delegates to claim the nomination ahead of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, and he delivered his most forceful call yet for superdelegates in states he's won to consider throwing their support to him.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the Vermont senator argued that Clinton "will need superdelegates to take her over the top at the convention in Philadelphia. In other words, it will be a contested convention."
No—it won’t. Hillary Clinton will end the contest with the most pledged delegates, and it won’t even be close. It was closer in 2008—and it wasn’t close back then, either. Best case scenario for Sanders at this point is that he splits the delegates through the end of the contest, but he’ll likely lose even more ground. So whether Clinton needs the superdelegates to get her a majority of all delegates is irrelevant. Obama needed the supers to get him a majority, too, and no one called it a “contested convention” because that would’ve been stupid and asinine.
Now Sanders wants the superdelegates—the party elite—to give him something he did not earn. And even his claim to the supers of states he won is asinine. Why? Because:
1) The supers were designed to be apart from the pledged delegate system, and by who? By none other than Sanders’ top strategist Tad Devine. If Sanders has a problem with the way the system works, he knows where to lodge such complaints.
2) It’s undemocratic for a party elite to ignore the will of the voters and substitute their preferences for that of the party base. It was bullshit when Clinton made these arguments in 2008, and it’s bullshit today.
2) You can rail against the establishment all cycle and sue the Democratic Party. It was good politics! It won him lots of votes! But then don’t expect that very same establishment to bail you out. If you go to war against them, you must beat them on the electoral battlefield. And it can be done! Because Barack Obama did it in 2008. And if the supers wouldn’t bail out Clinton that year, when Clinton was on the losing end, why would they turn on her this year, when she’s on the winning end?
3) Math, math, math. Give Sanders ALL the delegates of the states he’s won—and he still loses.
Per figures supplied by the DNC, if you give Sanders all of the super-delegates in all of the states he has won so far, the total is around 150. If you give Clinton all of the super-delegates in all the states she won, the total is around 375. If, for good measure, you were to also give Sanders all of the super-delegates in Indiana and in California (both of which Sanders says he has a good chance at winning), Sanders would still be around 100 super-delegates behind Clinton. That would not help Sanders close the gap among pledged delegates, obviously
4) If delegates are apportioned proportionately depending on the popular vote, why would supers be apportioned winner-take-all? If you want to keep within the spirit of the system, you’d apportion them proportionately, right? Or would you do it by regions within the state? Sanders won Michigan, but he got creamed in Detroit. So shouldn’t all Detroit supers (which are likely a significant part of the state’s superdelegate delegation) stick with Clinton?
5) The overall scorecard shows no real Sanders advantage:
|
CLINTON |
SANDERS |
ALL contests |
25 |
18 |
DELEGATES |
1,661 (55%) |
1,372 (45%) |
Popular vote |
12.14M |
8.97M |
BLUE |
12 |
10 |
RED |
11 |
7 |
CAUCUS States |
2 |
11 |
PRIMARY States |
21 |
6 |
> 75% WHITE |
3 |
13 |
< 75% WHITE |
20 |
4 |
OPEN |
12 |
11 |
CLOSED |
11 |
6 |
NORTHEAST |
4 |
4 |
SOUTH |
13 |
1 |
MIDWEST |
4 |
5 |
WEST |
2 |
7 |
Winning low-performance caucuses doesn’t give Sanders any particular moral high ground. We all know caucuses reward the candidate with the most passionate supporters, and no one doubts those belong to Sanders. Barack Obama won the nomination in 2008 largely on the strength of performance in those undemocratic caucuses. So there’s nothing wrong with working the system to your advantage. But when caucuses are essentially the only game you’ve got, that’s a problem. You can’t go to hostile supers and demand they flip their vote to the loser because you won caucuses that exclude the vast majority of voters.
We have rules, and those rules include those odious caucuses, and Iowa and New Hampshire’s bullshit monopoly, and lots of other obnoxious rules (like the controversial open vs. closed). Regardless, everyone plays by those rules, someone gets the most delegates, and that person wins! That’s it. Those rules need to be changed. The calendar needs to be redone. The caucuses need to be killed (or penalties imposed on states that insist on using them). Whatever. The system sucks and it needs to be reformed.
But it’s not a system that invariably rewards the establishment (as Obama attests), and it’s not a system that can be tossed aside last minute because the loser doesn’t like that he lost. One candidate doesn’t like closed primaries, the other doesn’t like even more restrictive caucuses. One candidate doesn’t like Red states, the other one doesn’t like proportionate allocation of delegates.
But there’s one thing we should all have no problem agreeing to, and that’s the superdelegates should not overturn the will of the voters. And, at the beginning of the cycle, the Sanders campaign sure was 100 percent aboard that bandwagon! Too bad they’ve jumped off. It’s cynical, it’s hypocritical, and it’s hopelessly stupid because the party establishment will never abandon Clinton for the loser of the primary. And no amount of fantastical thinking will change that.