The Democrats in 1972 made the primary system truly democratic with a small D. The landslide loss by McGovern created the ridiculous super delegate category that was supposed to prevent the voters from making a so-called foolish decision. However, giving the party hacks a big vote in a close primary is the worst possible scenario for the voters in the primaries. What were the Democrats thinking in 1976 when they changed the rules? Did they think that an undemocratic tie breaker would be good for the Party?
Clearly a majority of the elected delegates should be the only way to choose a nominee. Otherwise, the winner of the elected delegates could possibly lose the nomination which would be a disaster for the Party. Can you imagine either Obama or Clinton losing the nomination to the super delegates if either wins the majority of elected delegates? It would confirm what Will Rogers said in the 1930s. "I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a Democrat."
Since the DNC has voided the Florida and Michigan delegates totaling 366, it can easily void the 842 super delegates. Taking those numbers out of the total would make the elected delegates the only basis for winning the nomination. It would require the nominee to get 1421 out of the total of 2841 elected delegates to get the nomination. It would eliminate the controversies created by the unintended consequences created by foolish party elders that made up these rules over 30 years ago. It would also end the controversy and need to do a redo of Michigan and Florida. More importantly, the loser of the this process would not have any complaints because the winner would truly have a majority of the elected delegates.
I am hopeful that Howard Dean will have the wisdom to know that this is the fairest possible solution to this highly contested primary and the only way to prevent a split party in November.
novamradio.com
Sheldon Drobny was the co-founder of Nova M radio and Air America Radio. He has supported many philanthropic causes and is currently involved in purchasing radio stations for liberal talk radio with his new company, Nova M Radio, Inc. Mr. Drobny specializes in business and tax matters and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Tax Court as a non-attorney. Less than 200 non-attorneys have been admitted to practice before the U.S. Tax Court since its inception in 1942. Mr. Drobny received a Bachelor of Science Degree in accounting from Roosevelt University in Chicago and is a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, an honorary fraternity recognizing acadamic achievement in colleges of business administration.
I've heard arguments made about the Electoral College that state that if some extreme "defect" were discovered about a President elected by winning the popular vote, the electors would have an opportunity to hand the nomination to someone more qualified. Imagine, for example, a situation where it was discovered that the winner on election day had paid to have his opponent poisoned or that the winner had sold weapons secrets to a terrorist organization to raise campaign cash.
We might call this the "second chance" defense for the Electoral College.
The same type of argument might be used for the super-delegates.
It might be used but it isn't valid. First of all, what could be less democratic? What ever happened to the idea of one person, one vote. It often takes thousands of "little people" to elect a single delegate. Why should these unelected elitist delegates have so much clout?
And secondly, the parallel to the Electoral College, which itself raises all kinds of un-democratic issues, is not parallel at all. In the hypothetical cited above, i.e. the case of a candidate who is shown to be "defective" after winning a majority of delegates through the primary process, there is no reason the delegates we, the people, voted for couldn't change their votes. That's what a "representative" process allows. We expect those we elect to represent our wishes (and our votes) unless the most extreme and unlikely circumstances subsequently occur.
The very idea of super-delegates is an outrage. If the Democratic Party had the selection of their nominee determined by "super-delegates", they would have a super problem winning the election. If this happened, maybe we could force them to rename the party to something more meaningful. I'm open to suggestions.
by
welshTerrier2 (7 articles, 3 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 105 comments)
on Thursday, February 7, 2008 at 10:48:03 PM
