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A Tennessee-based Democratic National Committee member backing an effort to use superdelegates to select the party’s presidential nominee is also a Republican donor and health care lobbyist
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- Title
- DNC Superdelegate Pushing Brokered Convention Is a GOP Donor
- Authors
- Lee Fang
- Published
- Feb 27 2020
- Word count
- 754 words
The superdelegate system is a problem, and the fact that this status gets extended to lobbyists rather than party leaders makes it doubly so. But the frame this article taking is pure alarmism meant to stoke outrage among Sanders fans. There is no meaningful effort among Superdelegates to subvert the general vote. If anyone has a majority of delegates, the superdelegates recognize it would be political suicide for them to subvert it. Even the Politico article (itself a pretty tawdry gossip rag) that recently raised the spectre of this was full of it, because when you read closely you'll notice that of the 93 people they interviewed, only 9 of them actually talked about it. They just want to keep raising this nonsense because it gets clicks. This is trashy, local news level "something in your kitchen might be poisoning your children. . . more at 11!" yellow journalism.
The only case where the plurality winner might not lead at the end would be if there is a second ballot where democratically elected delegates from other candidates consolidate behind a consensus pick to give them a majority. It was, frankly, irresponsible of Sanders to conflate elected delegates moving over to their second choice candidates with superdelegates subverting the democratic process. Media outlets that willfully propagate this conflation should be taken with a grain of salt because they're pretty clearly trying to skew their coverage to push an agenda.
10% willing to discuss a politically suicidal move is still pretty high. Plus several superdelegates are no longer running for office.
It's kind of like the 'X% of cops beat their spouses' study...only X% admit to it, the actual number could be higher.
Edit:. Also, the way they setup the rules is pretty shady. If 1 candidate fails to get to 50% (pretty high odds with such a wide field), the the superdelegates get to sway the process very hard (as much as by 20%) with no respect to the popular vote.
Willing to discuss is not even willing to do. So no, it’s not that high at all.
The difference is that domestic abuse is morally wrong, while swinging a candidate selection contest is merely tactically stupid. So I don’t see this as a very useful analogy.
This might just be a failure of the party to teach its own history to people. Traditionally, “superdelegate” type people were the only ones involved in candidate selection. They slowly increased the number of delegates selected through primaries and caucuses through the states to get more democratic input into the process. It was originally meant to be more of a “live test” of candidate’s electability claims and the convention would choose among nominees using pledged delegate counts as an indicator of strength in certain regions and with certain constituencies.
Over time people lost the plot with what the candidate selection process was for and more and more of the decision making aspect was turned over to pledged delegates selected by contests. It’s not like they set up the rules to swing results they don’t like. In fact, they steadily made the process more and more democratic because they thought that process was more likely to find an electable, consensus candidate for the party than the “smoke filled room” way they used before.
The “popular vote” for a series of contests that stretches over months has always been a dubious rubric at best. What if a candidate gets a bunch of delegates and then, halfway through, some news comes out about him that makes him persona non grata for a big chunk of the party? Suppose, for example, that someone gets to the convention with a “popular vote” plurality and then news comes out that they’ve secretly been in the Klan. If you have decent arguments that much of his vote and delegate count would actually not want him running, why does he get to claim that support? What’s more, lots of people drop out over the course of the process, so why do their votes and delegates not have a say in the final outcome?
It’s really easy to get wrapped up in the horse race and the importance of getting your preferred candidate elected. So the temptation is really high to view the process and it’s rules as a game theory exercise to determine who gets advantaged or disadvantaged by any particular norm or standard. But this all kind of misses the essence of what this process is meant to accomplish, which is to establish a candidate who best represents the consensus views and priorities of the Democratic Party.
All that said, the primary process is just really badly designed to fulfill that. It runs too long and it’s too expensive and it empowers media charlatans who don’t know what they’re talking about too much. A system where Michael Bloomberg was stopped from getting a possible plurality vote advantage based purely on massive TV ad buys solely by the fact that he had to run up against an anti-billionaire Valkyrie in a debate is fundamentally broken. It leaves too much to chance and media narratives set up by corporate media stooges.
I would contend that distorting popular votes is also immoral. Just because it happened before doesn't mean it should happen again.
Democrats love to hollar and scream when the popular vote would have put them in the white house if not for historical precedent. Maybe they should look inward as well, instead of only being outraged when it suits them.
Hold up. Are you honestly suggesting that someone should be able to buy their way into popularity solely on the basis of their ad spend?. Sorry, I'm an idiot that can't read.Bloomberg is a Republican (well independent after becoming an incumbant) with Republican policies. He shouldn't have a seat at the table, and the fact that he can buy his way into the conversation is horrific.
I'll leave this here for anyone still thinking Bloomberg is somehow acting in good faith.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=p2iKT21Efms
That's the exact opposite of what he said. He said it's a disgrace that it took Warren trashing Bloomberg in the debate to shut down his candidacy, something that was far from guaranteed, as opposed to the ad-buy strategy being fundamentally non-viable.
I apologise @NaraVara, I re-read more closely and my initial interpreting was wrong.
The system is fundamentally broken because the only thing that stopped Bloomberg was that the other candidates shut him down hard.
I'm worried that it isn't actually enough.
I’d like to hear your argument. Electoral systems are just rule sets for forming consensus. There is no moral dimension to it, just trade offs in terms of how well it fulfills it’s purpose as a mechanism for forming consensus.
The rules are what they are. And the primary process exists to surface competitive candidates for the general election. That’s the only reason it exists. And since the actual election is skewed in certain ways, the primary process also needs to reflect those skews so you can actually have a competitive candidate.
Again, I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding in what the purpose of a candidate selection process is for. It’s for surfacing competitive candidates who reflect the party’s consensus position on issues.
It’s pretty clear that this is a self-serving argument from the Sanders camp. If we went to the convention and Biden had a 42% plurality, I seriously doubt anyone would begrudge Sanders cobbling together a coalition with Warren and released delegates to take him over the top in a second ballot.
Agree to disagree. Everything humans do has some sort of moral component.
Well, until a popular candidate appears that the establishment doesn't really like, and then those rules suddenly change. Or if someone drops significant sums of money, and the rules change really quick to allow them on the debate stage. Law is a shadow of morality, not a beacon. We should change the rules if the consensus is that they should be changed.
And if the party (of the only 2 competitive at the national level) doesn't actually reflect the will of the population? I'm fairly certain that neither Hillary Clinton or Trump were good options for the consensus of the people. And if the parties don't reflect the will of the people, they are failing at their only intended purpose and should be dismantled.
No, that would be fine if it was a proper instant runoff vote, and the lowest person was struck from the ballot and the process repeated until a majority consensus is reached. But adding super delegates to the mix in round 2 (and probably not having additional rounds) has a huge potential to sway the outcome without reflecting the will of the voters.
I was asking for the logic that led you to the conclusion that simply abiding by the agreed upon framework for how candidate selection works would be immoral.
When have convention selection rules ever been changed at the last minute?
There is a process for changing the rules. In fact, this is one of the things the delegates at the convention actually do. They decide what the rules should be for the next election cycle through a complicated series of committee meetings and votes.
You’ll notice, though, that this doesn’t imply the rules should be changed in the middle of the contest you’re doing. Like I said, arguing this is pretty transparently self-serving on the Sanders part, and it’s sounding like you’re not even trying to make an argument that it’s not self-serving. You claim it’s immoral, but you can’t actually make an argument about how. When I asked you made an evasive comment about how morality exists in some abstract sense.
Having 1 person to represent the “will” of a country of 300M people is always going to be a dodgy proposition. The idea that the country as a whole can even have a coherent “will” is itself a bit ridiculous. It’s not about a popular will, just people hiring someone to do a job and agreeing to follow a constitutional process to do so.
What is this based on? Trump is a very good reflection of the Republican Party platform. Probably the best they’ve had in a generation. Clinton was a decent reflection of the myriad interests within the Democratic Party as well. You personally disliking them doesn’t mean they’re not decent consensus picks. Part of being a consensus pick in a broad coalition is that most people are going to have serious misgivings about them.
I’m a voter, and my will is that the delegate I send to the convention on my behalf exercise their judgement to wheel and deal to best represent the values and interests of my district. This is what being a delegate means. I have delegated decision and deal making authority to them to represent my interests. I am trusting their judgement to make a good call. You’re not voting for a candidate, you’re voting for delegates to go to the convention. The candidate at the top is just the general “branding” around what kinds of broad goals and platform they’re up there to represent.
Superdelegates may or may not actually put a thumb on the scales in second or third round positioning, but they never have actually gone against what the majority of regular delegates have settled on. The fear mongering around this is, again, an extremely irresponsible thing for the Sanders campaign to do. Especially since it’s extremely obvious they will change their tune as soon as the shoe is on the other foot and Biden or Bloomberg ends up in there with a plurality instead of Sanders.
Sounds like an example of the "you're either with us or against us" fallacy.
I think there's a world of difference between "if you're not with us, you're against us" and "if you're not with us...why are you in one of our leadership positions?"
This guy is a lobbyist who lobbies both Democrats and Republicans, as well as being a senior member of the Democratic party. Does that not strike you as a conflict of interest? He has one job which is to get Democrats elected, which might involve advocating for increased government regulation or role in the healthcare industry (even moderate candidates like Biden have said they'd do something along these lines). And his other job is to represent...the interests of the healthcare industry.
Maybe, depends on the amount of money. Talking to some Republicans or even being friendly with them can be in the Democrats' interest. And giving money to someone's campaign is basically how a lobbyist gets a politician's attention.
Large companies compete with each other, but they also hire each others' executives when they can. Why should it be different in politics?
Corporate lobbyists for an industry that profits from making healthcare inaccessible through world record prices do not belong in the nomination process for the party that wants to fix the problem. I don't see how it can be compared to two companies competing in a marketplace.
The US healthcare system is bad but I don't think the people who are part of the system are necessarily to blame. It's a systemic problem, after all.
It seems like convincing Republican politicians to do something about healthcare or at least educating them about it would be helpful. It all depends on what he was advocating? It could be good or bad and I'm unwilling to prejudge that.
Hmmm it's almost as if democracy only really matters when the people go along with the status quo.
Raise hell if the candidate with the popular vote doesn't get the nomination.
I agree. (Although it's not really guaranteed Bernie,the one being overwhelmingly opposed here will win the popular vote.) And it won't even be unprecedented.