DNC moves to make the Democratic Party more democratic
A DNC “unity” committee recommended the effective abolition of 60 percent of superdelegates back in November. I don’t know if the changes have been ratified yet.
If the Unity and Reform Commission’s recommendations are adopted by the DNC, as they are widely expected to be, the party’s presidential nominating process will be significantly different in 2020.
The most identifiable change for ordinary politics watchers is likely to be the scaled back role of superdelegates.
Superdelegates are Democratic elected officials and insiders, including DNC members, who are “unpledged,” meaning they are free to vote for a presidential candidate regardless of who primary and caucus voters in their state choose. There is no equivalent to superdelegates in the Republican Party, though critics claim that party incumbents have their own undemocratic ways of exercising influence over the presidential nomination process.
Sanders backers lamented from the start of the 2016 primary that the decision of hundreds of superdelegates to endorse Clinton before Sanders had even entered the race had unfairly jaded the contest’s outcome. Wikileaks’ publication of hacked emails by DNC staffers in June 2016 appeared to validate Sanders partisans’ view that the DNC had at least favored Clinton.
Why reduce the number of super delegates by 60%? Why not eliminate them altogether?
Get rid of the super delegates, the very term is toxic at this point. Save the games for the elections and not the internal workings of the party. Believe I speak for many when I say the DNC not only had a hand in Hilary’s defeat but made us all look bad in the process.
I’m hopeful. Zero is optimal, but 60% fewer is a positive movement.
They are also making the DNC operations more transparent so they can’t be takenover by some malignant cancer like the Clinton campaign.
“Why reduce the number of super delegates by 60%? Why not eliminate them altogether?”
Two words: Donald Trump. Republicans lost control of their party to the mob, which is what we call “democratic forces” when they do something stupid. I doubt you’ll find may Democrats tasked with winning elections willing to let the Democratic electorate pick its nominees.
The problem with the Democratic Party isn’t its structure. It’s the people operating it.
Great point Alby.
The Democrats are going to discourage people so fewer and fewer vote. It’s bad enough now
Clarify. Republicans may have lost control of the “party” to “the mob.” But they won the presidency.
Logic doesn’t follow.
@REV: The mob has lots of votes, not much brains. That’s how you get Trump. Any of the other 16 candidates would have gotten their entire agenda through in weeks, but we’re a year later and they couldn’t undo Obamacare and their main legislative accomplishment is a tax bill everyone hates. That’s because the mob doesn’t care about the conservative agenda, and never has.
Mobs have no goals beyond “Hulk smash!” That’s not a governing philosophy, even if it’s been the GOP’s philosophy for years, and as the rotten fruits of their rotten policies fall to earth, more people will realize it. Until 2016 they could always point to some pocket of Democratic power as the force stopping them. Now they have no excuse. That’s why Fox keeps dredging up the Corpse of Hillary Clinton.
We talk about Trump supporters and other conservatives as if they wanted bad government. They don’t, they’re just too ignorant to understand how to get good government. So when Republican programs fail to help them, they will notice. They’ll be in the same position Democrats were in November, when Clinton was telling them that America was already great. It’s not great for most people, and they’ll stay dissatisfied until somebody starts helping them.
So yes, Republicans have gained office, but their agenda is actually harmful to their standing with their voters. That’s what I mean by losing control of the party. The Republican way is to lead the voters by the nose, not to follow them.
Republicans value the validation of their bigotry more then their kids
I get you. But you’re making a long-term assumption that the mob GOP will fail. We have no idea if this is true.
So far they basically have all the judicial appointments, they stole 1.5 trillion dollars, net neutrality, EPA deregulation, oil drilling, etc.
What you’re saying could be true, but we don’t know yet.
Mob rule always fails, doesn’t matter where the mob’s sympathies lie.
As Marge Schott said of Hitler, one could say of the French and Russian revolutions: They were good at first, but then they took things too far.
The mob doesn’t care about any of the things you mentioned. They care intensely about health care. The GOP could switch positions to be on the right side of all those issues and fucking with health care would still make them unpopular.
People vote their own perceived interests. Not all of the people, of course, but the majority. Nobody votes based on climate change policy, because unless you live in a flood zone it doesn’t materially affect you. Lots of people vote based on their health insurance, which for most people is the second-biggest expense after rent/mortgage payments.
When will the DNC reinstate all the Bernie supporters they demoted or removed?
When will the DNC have a do over election for their head as they didn’t follow the procedure they set up for those elections?
Don’t hold you breath. But if you want to look on the bright side, Bernie was heavily involved with this Unity Commission.
Mr Vanella wrote:
This, I assume, refers to the recently passed tax cut package, and this is one of the fundamental differences. The left seem to believe that tax money — all money, really — belongs to the government, and that not taking as much money from the people who earned it amounts to the people who earned it having stolen it. Conservatives realize that all money belongs to the people who earned it, and that taxation is something which we suffer for some government services.
Yes. It belongs to the people who earned it. Not the corporations who get tax cuts at the expense of programs we already fucking paid in to.
Conservatives are the ones who can be convinced that access to something they already bought is an entitlement and they are a leach for wanting something that is theirs. Im all for ending SOcial security of we turn off the taps for the boomers right now and I get a full refund (with interest and adjusted for inflation) of the money Ive been paying in since I was 14…. but that of course wont happen. Those of us under 40 will keep paying to fund the loves of people who ruined our future.
You’ve got yours entitlements, so fuck everyone else. We get it. Fucking boring old twit.
If you look at the money, Dana, you will find that its value is derived from the faith and credit of the government.
It is their money. Money doesn’t exist without government. Without the government, “your” money is worthless. Without taxes, there is no government (and if there aren’t enough taxes, you’ll have a government that doesn’t control anything; we’re well on our way there).
So only on your level of thinking does money “belong” to people, who “earn” it. Your simplistic understanding of this — your inability to see outside the box we all live in — is why we live in a pyramid-shaped society. You seem like an engineering sort. Is this the society you would design?
Not all societies are arranged along these lines. Hunter-gatherer societies, in particular, go out of their way to deter it.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways
We are soon to enter an age, if we haven’t already, in which linking one’s paid work to one’s ability to earn a living will condemn a majority of people to poverty without hope of betterment. Automation will continue to lower the need for human labor; many of the remaining jobs will be for unskilled service jobs like cleaning hotel rooms and changing bedpans. That reality dooms our current path to oblivion.
It’s not a matter of whether you agree with me or not. It’s a matter of whether you can see it or not.
I doubt he’ll be able to grasp any of that. His mind is already dead, and his body will soon follow.
All the money the very wealthy have put into getting idiots like him to kick down, will have been well spent, though.
I’m not convinced that superdelegates are a barrier against the errors of the mob. After all, the last batch of Dem superdelegates overwhelmingly supported a candidate that couldn’t even beat an incarnate fiasco like Donald Trump.
The people who “earned” it. That’s fucking hilarious. It’s the sanctimony in the stupidity that gets me. Conservative “realized”… good word. It takes an epiphany based on fairy tales to believe it.
See, we understand things. You believe what you’re told because you’ve been convinced some people “deserve” what they’ve “earned”.
Absolutely false. If we don’t start taking care of each other this entire experiment is finished. You’re just a selfish, confused old prick. Tell us more stories about reinforced concrete, like the kind in you skull…
@DG: Superdelegates are there to modify the will of the people, because popular sentiment fluctuates fairly rapidly. Hillary was the “safe” choice. Safe was the wrong way to go when the public wanted change. Remember, they were a reaction to McGovern.
They need to be reduced because risk avoidance is not a successful strategy. Look at all the Democratic losers after McGovern. Every one of them was the least risky choice on offer. Carter was incumbent. Mondale was labor’s last gasp, and a long-serving loyal soldier, exciting only compared against the technocrat Dukakis. Clinton’s path was a risky one for Democrats that paid off well for him. Gore represented a safe continuation of Clinton prosperity. Kerry was chosen because his military background made him impervious to the “weak Democrat” stereotype (lol). Obama, the first black president, represented a huge risk. Hillary, even though she would have been the first woman, was a return to the past glory of the Clintons, and ran by explicitly and implicitly saying America was on the right track.
If you let Democratic voters pick the Democratic candidate, you will always run the risk of choosing someone repellent to the rest of the electorate; that holds true whether the reasons for that attitude are “legitimate” or not.
They did what they are supposed to do. It didn’t work out, so it should be changed, but I don’t know enough to know whether 40% or 0% of the current number would bring about the better result.