Republishing this diary from a couple days ago, as the DNC’s superdelegate compromise was just announced to the convention hall in Philly, with a minimum of dissent:
Thought a rundown of the proposal + some accompanying math for context might be useful.
Good news tonight from The Hill:
The Democratic Rules Committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of a major shift in the superdelegate system Saturday night after a deal was reached between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters.
The committee approved nearly unanimously an amendment that preserves the existing superdelegate role for elected U.S. lawmakers and governors, but will bind the remaining superdelegates — roughly two-thirds — to primary and caucus results.
The new rule, which will still need to be formally approved by the DNC and won’t be in effect until the next presidential election, establishes a “Unity Commission” to make recommendations on the reforms.
(source: thehill.com/...)
This is a good compromise. It gets rid of over half of all the superdelegates, ensures that pledged delegates from the rank-and-file won’t be forced out of the overall process by newly vote-less elected officials, and ensures that elected officials can still act in a limited but present “safeguard” but without superdelegates as a whole totally swamping the process.
So, we still have superdelegates — for both good and ill — but far fewer and with far more personal accountability for their actions (as they are almost all elected officials).
For a more detailed view of what this likely means for 2020 and beyond, we can look at the breakdown of superdelegates from the 2016 nomination process.
(source: en.wikipedia.org/...)
Around 15% of all delegates were superdelegates, meaning that (in theory) a candidate could have received 58.8% of the elected delegate vote but still not clinched the nomination due to superdelegates. Moving forward to 2020, the plan is that only around 6.8% of the all delegates will be superdelegates, and nearly all of them (93%) current elected officials.
Using the 2016 numbers as a baseline, the new reforms would cut the number of superdelegate votes from 712 down to 279 — a reduction of over 60%. To put it simply it eliminates the “elected” DNC superdelegates, and except for the “DPL” group leaves superdelegates who were currently accountable and would quite likely remain accountable to the voters in their districts and states.
A sensible reform, and a fair one. In one last quote from the article above: “Delegates from both the Sanders and Clinton camps spoke out in favor of the deal before the vote. No one spoke in opposition.”
Sounds good! Now, about those vote-suppressing caucuses...