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.
