I know that a lot of folks, on both aisles, have been complaining that the primary process doesn’t make a lot of sense. Putting aside the Republican primary for now, many Democrats have generally been unhappy with the whole delegate-versus-superdelegate dynamic, and how the abstraction of “delegates” just adds layers of separation between actual voters and the politicians they ostensibly elect. It’s messy, it’s confusing, and it’s no fun.
And I totally get it — it’s often-times complicated and burdensome even for voters, after all, and it’s not a system you'd see in “true” democracy, and so forth. However, at this point in the primary, it’s clear to me that party elites, and not voters, should decide who our candidate is. In fact, I think that the most principled, honest, and democratic thing we can have at this point is a Democratic Convention where the political elite coronate the candidate that got fewer votes, earned fewer pledged delegates, and won the fewest contests.
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Because here’s the thing: Unlike voters, the political elite know what they’re doing. They’ve been in Washington for years, after all, and a lot of these folks are elected officials, or have been. And I think we can all agree that such experience makes these folks far more qualified and able in picking a candidate than us private citizens can ever hope for, right? If we ever want an insurgent candidate to capture the nomination, well, it really ought to be the party elites that deliver that. They know what’s best for us.
Plus, the political elite are smart, too. They know that one of the two current candidates polls better against Trump in the general election, and they know that polling 186 days in advance yields figures that are bulletproof. After all, just look at polling for the Democratic nomination 186 days ago — they positively nailed it with their accuracy:
So clearly we can trust national polling today to meaningfully represent what will happen in November. I mean, what could happen between now and then? It’s not as if this entire political season has been anything but predictable.
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Now, I know that supporters of a certain candidate have argued that the superdelegates should follow “the will of the people”, but — why? What does that matter? Just because voters have chosen one candidate over the other by millions more votes, doesn’t mean that they’re the best choice. Sometimes, the party elites just have to step in, tell people that they voted wrong, and pick the right guy.
...All of this to say, simply put, that I think this country needs a political revolution, and if we’re going to get that, it has to be on the backs of party elites ignoring the voters and ignoring the pledged delegates. Because it is only in the hands of the establishment, overturning the will of the people, that can we realize real democracy in action, and say to the majority of voters in the Democratic Party: “yes, your vote matters”.