Re: Attention All Obama Supporters
by
brownapril
05/17/2008, 8:54 AM #
If anyone is interested in reading, here is an article from the DailyKos entitled "A Brief History of Superdelegates", Poblano, Feb. 15, 2008:
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The article discusses the 1972 McGovern nomination in some detail. According to the author, although McGovern "had earned 57% of the delegates, he had only 25% of the popular vote, in what was essentially a three-way tie with Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace." The author explains that this occurred in part due to irregularities in the rules from state to state with some states being winner-take-all states and some proportionally allocating delegates. Further, the author explains, "McGovern won the roughly 25% of the Democratic electorate that represented anti-war progressives, and Wallace won the 25% of Southern/segregationalist votes. The remaining 50% vote of mainline Democrats was split between several weak candidates, and so one of the factional candidates was able to win....
So, rather than to override the will of the electorate, superdelegates were created in some sense to enforce it in elections whose results were skewed by odd delegate allocations or weak multi-way fields that would allow a fringe candidate to win a plurality. Both of these conditions prevailed in 1972; neither of them do in 2008."
The DailyKos article cites four reasons for the inclusion of superdelegates in the nominating process in 1982: 1) To increase the sense of order and avert a crisis at the Convention; 2) To get party officials more involved with the eventual nominee; 3) To nominate a candidate who can win; 4) To check against a plurality, factional candidate who does not reflect the prevailing sentiment of the electorate. As to points 3 and 4, the author concludes:
rejecting a candidate who was perceived to have received the majority of support from the voters in a two-person contest would be harmful to the Party, all else being equal. And so the superdelegates would have to have an extremely strong rationale to do something like that. The only plausible such rationale that seems to be present from the "founders' documents" would be to nominate the more electable candidate. However, because a candidate who was nominated in contradiction to the will of the pledged delegates would probably be rendered less electable by that process, there would need to be a very strong difference in electability for that to come into play.
There has been a nomination contest in which the superdelegates played a role in selecting the party nominee. In 1984, Walter Mondale won the democratic nomination by gaining the support of sufficient superdelegates; however, the superdelegates did not go against the will of the voters, Mondale having the lead over Hart in the number of elected delegates won in primaries and caucuses.
It is interesting to note, and somewhat ironic, that organized feminists initially argued against superdelegates:
Technical Advisory Committee Member Susan Estrich of Massachusetts argued that creating a new category of delegates who were not subject to the fair reflection and candidate right of approval rules would create a new status of delegate which she referred to as “super-delegates.” These delegates, argued Estrich, would be overwhelmingly white and male. Even were they balanced by an equal number of women in the total delegation — there would still be the problem of “equal power.” The “super-delegates” because of their greater flexibility in the choice of a nominee, would have greater power than the female delegates committed to presidential candidates. (“Unintended Consequences,” by Susan Estrich, Memorandum to the Hunt Commission, September 9, 1981.)
Quoted in "A History of 'Super-Delegates' in the Democratic Party," Elaine Karmack, Feb. 14, 2008, <link>
Here are a couple of other articles of interest:
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Both ultimately suggest that historically superdelegates ratify the results of primaries and caucuses rather than using their influence to overrule the voice of the people.
