The thing is, the job of the Democratic party is to field a candidate that can win the presidential election. This does not necessarily entail picking the candidate that can garner the greatest popular vote among registered Democrats, especially if you're talking about a win by a very slim margin. The superdelegates have about 1/5 of the votes, which means that they only come into play when the people (as a group) are undecided about which candidate to field. If the popular vote is overwhelmingly in favor of one candidate, the superdelegates will not be able to "steal" the primary for the other one.
Essentially what is happening with the superdelegates is that there is no clear majority opinion among democratic voters as to who the candidate should be, so a group of people with political experience and loyalty to the democratic party are being asked to arbitrate. To me this is not a glaringly inferior solution to automatically fielding a candidate because 53% of democrats support them.
I understand people's concern about superdelegates, but a democratic system does not mean that absolutely everything must run on straight popular vote.
I don't know the numbers so I'll use your 1/5th as given. You say that if the popular vote is overwhelmingly in favor of one candidate, the SuperDelegates will not be able to steal the election.
Mathematically, then, the voters would have to lock up at least 50% of the delegates before the SuperDelegates have a chance to vote. But since the voters only represent 80% of the delegates, the winner would have to get at least 62.5 of the vote (50/80=.625; which means at least 25% margin of victory over all other opponents) to make the SuperDelegate vote moot.
While it's unlikely that all SuperDelegates would vote for one candidate, it is theoretically possible. And even if they don't all vote one way, it is ver conceivable that they could swing the nominee selection in a huge way. Thus the perception of SuperDelegates having enormous, super-human powers.
If we really want the party elders to be more like tie-breakers, you'd think 5-10% of the delegate voting power would be enough.
And another thing: if the job is really to field a candidate that can win the presidential election, where the hell were they in 2004. Seriously, it still amazes me that the democrats failed to defeat W after he had already proved to be dangerously ineffective in his first 3 years.
Yeah, I do agree that the superdelegate system is flawed (1/5 is a number I got from some news article), but I don't agree with the idea that just the existence of any superdelegates at all is an extreme offense to democracy, or that it makes voting pointless.
People are only raising hell about superdelegates because the majority of them pledged themselves to HRC. If Obama was getting most of them, I'm sure there wouldn't be as much hubbub.
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timeasmymeasure
"dont bother voting"
Date: 2008-03-03 12:22 am (UTC)Even CNN gave a less distorted picture..
no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 03:04 am (UTC)Essentially what is happening with the superdelegates is that there is no clear majority opinion among democratic voters as to who the candidate should be, so a group of people with political experience and loyalty to the democratic party are being asked to arbitrate. To me this is not a glaringly inferior solution to automatically fielding a candidate because 53% of democrats support them.
I understand people's concern about superdelegates, but a democratic system does not mean that absolutely everything must run on straight popular vote.
Super Majority
Date: 2008-03-03 04:32 pm (UTC)Mathematically, then, the voters would have to lock up at least 50% of the delegates before the SuperDelegates have a chance to vote. But since the voters only represent 80% of the delegates, the winner would have to get at least 62.5 of the vote (50/80=.625; which means at least 25% margin of victory over all other opponents) to make the SuperDelegate vote moot.
While it's unlikely that all SuperDelegates would vote for one candidate, it is theoretically possible. And even if they don't all vote one way, it is ver conceivable that they could swing the nominee selection in a huge way. Thus the perception of SuperDelegates having enormous, super-human powers.
If we really want the party elders to be more like tie-breakers, you'd think 5-10% of the delegate voting power would be enough.
And another thing: if the job is really to field a candidate that can win the presidential election, where the hell were they in 2004. Seriously, it still amazes me that the democrats failed to defeat W after he had already proved to be dangerously ineffective in his first 3 years.
Re: Super Majority
Date: 2008-03-03 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 04:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-05 07:42 pm (UTC)"Hey, he got the majority of the votes, so he is elected, but we will select her."
How would that go over? Not very well.