This long shot superdelegate strategy being pushed by the Sanders campaign is beyond ridiculous and actually contradicts Tad Devine’s past statements.
This race is about pledged delegates and the candidate who has the most at the end of this process deserves the nomination, period.
Devine knows this and yet we have this from Tad:
www.politico.com/...
“Our plan on this is we’ve got a long way to go, and we’ve got to demonstrate that Bernie’s the strongest candidate,” said Sanders strategist Tad Devine. “We believe that slowly we can win support for people who aren’t for someone, or who are softly for her, and then we can reach out more.”
Devine goes on to say they'll lobby superdelegates for their support, in essence trying to overturn the will of the voters. As we’ll see later, his view was quite different back in 2008.
“Absent Hillary getting out of the race, I think there’s no way that this race isn’t going to be very close in pledged delegates, even if we succeed,” Devine said. “The best outcome for us, given the nature of the system, is a very close advantage at the end."
Sanders’ superdelegate pitch will likely take the shape of both direct lobbying and a more formal pitch. Sanders’ campaign will argue that voter enthusiasm and holding to the populist principles of the party are on Sanders’ side. They’ll point to their massive, low-dollar online fundraising.
It’s interesting how Tad Devine, when asked about this in 2008, was very adamant that going against voter participation would disenfranchise many, including young voters!
Devine couldn't have been more clear about superdelegates in 2008.
www.cnn.com/...
If the superdelegates were to tip the balance against the popular vote, the turmoil would last long beyond the convention, longtime Democratic Party strategist Tad Devine said.
"If a perception develops that somehow this decision has been made not by voters participating in primaries or caucuses, but by politicians in some mythical backroom, I think that the public could react strongly against that," Devine said.
"The problem is [if] people perceive that voters have not made the decision -- instead, insiders have made the decision -- then all of these new people who are being attracted to the process, particularly the young people who are voting for the first time, will feel disenfranchised or in some way alienated," he said.
2008 Tad Devine concludes that overriding voters will hurt the Democratic Party.
Devine said it could hurt the party in the general election.
"I think it will hurt us particularly because so many of the policies that we're saying we will pursue in government as Democrats are based on fairness, whether it's the tax policies that we advocate or the social programs we want to advance, there's a fairness component in all of that," he said. "People need to believe, I think, that our process is fair as well, if they want to believe that our policies will be fair."
And as much as they would like to see Sanders win, even MoveOn.org is against this strategy of usurping the will of the voters.
www.politico.com/...
MoveOn.org, for example, has endorsed Sanders, but has also already collected close to 200,000 signatures on a petition to get rid of superdelegates.
“We want him to win the primaries and caucuses, we want him to be the nominee, we want him to be the president,” said MoveOn Washington director Ben Wikler. “But we also think the nominee should be the person who wins the primaries and caucuses. If that’s Clinton, then Clinton should be the nominee, if that’s Sanders, Sanders should be the nominee.”
Jeff Berman, from the Clinton campaign, seemed genuinely surprised the Sanders campaign was pushing a strategy discounting voter elected pledged delegates.
"There's no history from prior cycles of superdelegates switching their commitments other than an isolated handful. It's just so rare," added Jeff Berman, a senior adviser and delegate strategist for Clinton who played a similar role for Obama. "And it's surprising that the Sanders campaign would be pushing a strategy that would have them lose among the pledged delegates elected by the voters and then overturn that with superdelegates."
Very surprising, indeed and wrong. Tad Devine needs to remember what he said in 2008 and let this process play out. The candidate who has the majority of pledged delegates in the end wins. This is how we stay true to the process and it’s also how we don’t disenfranchise voters with some "mythical backroom” decision.