The Democrats Illusion of Democracy

Full disclosure: I support Bernie Sanders.

April 26th, 2016. Another night of primaries come and gone.

On the GOP side, a clean sweep for the reality TV star.

As for the Democrats, four states for the former First Lady and one for the 75-year-old Jewish Senator. Since that night we’ve also had the Indiana primary in which Sanders emerged the winner.

Total delegate count as of right now: Clinton: 2,205. Sanders: 1,401. Needed to clinch the nomination: 2,383.

So Hillary is just 178 delegates shy of the magic number while Bernie is just under a thousand short. Looks like the people have spoken, right?

The problem is, which people are doing the talking here?

Because of Clinton’s 2,205 delegates, 24% (522) are “Super delegates”.

Now, if you’re a 90-year-old Japanese soldier still fighting World War II from a cave on a remote Pacific island or just emerged from the time-locked bomb shelter you’ve lived in since the Cuban Missile Crisis, you won’t know what I’m talking about when I say “Super delegate”.

No, they aren’t political wonks who can bend steel with their bare hands. Nor is there a Marvel comic book series about them.

But they can (and in my opinion, have) tip the Democratic primary process one way or the other.

The 715 total super delegates will represent 20% of the overall vote at the Democratic National Convention. They can vote any damned way they want. And as you will see, they do.

To give this some perspective; at this stage of the primary process, Hillary has, via caucus and primary voting, garnered 1,683 delegates (or 41.5% of the 4,050 total “regular” delegates to Bernie’s 1,362 (33.6% of the total regular delegates). A difference of just 321. And with delegate-rich states like California (where Bernie is expected to do well) still on the horizon, you would hardly call this race over.

Ah, but we haven’t factored in the SUPER DELEGATES! Many of whom declared which candidate they were supporting long before many of the primaries took place.

As of this moment, 561 (73% of the 715) super delegates have pledged. 522 for Clinton…

…and 39 (5%) for Sanders.

How is it that the difference in pledged delegates representing the two candidates that were chosen by voters in primaries and caucuses is 8% and the difference between the super delegates representing the two candidates is 70%?

Very simple. The democrats have decided to put party over the people.

There are a couple of things you have to understand when it comes to the super delegate dilemma. First, the whole thing was started with the express purpose of giving the democratic party more control over selecting their candidate.

That began as an idea when Humphry lost a squeaker in ’68 to Nixon. And then got green-lighted when McGovern was shellacked by Tricky Dick in ’72.

But come on, Dems. Humphry did pretty well as a “second choice” candidate. RFK would almost certainly have been the nominee (and likely won) had he not been assassinated. And McGovern was at an extreme disadvantage running against an incumbent president in pretty good economic times. Folks don’t like to rock the boat in when the sailing is smooth.

Still they went forward with their super delegate plan to make sure the voters didn’t screw things up again. It was finally established in 1980. How have things gone since then?

1980: Reagan over Carter (incumbent)

1984: Reagan (incumbent) over Mondale (who won only one state)

1988: Bush 1 over Dukakis (who won only 10 states)

1992: Clinton over Bush 1 (incumbent) ***It must be noted here that many political experts believe that Bush would have won this election had it not been for the independent campaign of H. Ross Perot who garnered nearly 20 million votes, mostly from conservatives who likely would have voted republican, giving Bush 1 a second term.

1996: Clinton (incumbent) over Dole ***Again, Perot ran as an independent taking 8 million votes in an election where the popular vote difference between the two major party candidates was almost exactly that number.

2000: Bush 2 over Gore (The hanging chad election. More on that later.)

2004: Bush 2 (incumbent) over Kerry

2008: Obama over McCain

2012: Obama (incumbent) over Romney

Since the advent of the super delegate system, your record is 4 and 5 in favor of the GOP. With two of those democratic victories perhaps coming as a result of the vote being split by conservative third-party candidates. Remove Perot from those elections and you’re likely 3–6.

So, who ARE the super delegates?

To start off with, they are politicians. Every democratic member of congress is a super delegate. Then there are democratic governors and the members of the DNC. The rest are former statesmen and major players in the party.

Now, if these super delegates were apportioned like pledged delegates, instead of a 522–39 Clinton advantage, the numbers would be 292 for Clinton and 237 for Sanders. And the total delegate count would be Hillary-1,964 and Bernie-1,577.

Hardly an insurmountable lead. And this doesn’t factor in the possible effect that super delegates pre-announcing their support can have on the decision of the average voter.

The states that held primaries on April 26th represented a total of 384 possible delegates. Hillary won four, Bernie took one. Their net take in delegates for the night was Clinton-217, Sanders 165.

My point being that 522 super delegates deciding and announcing that Hillary is their choice is equivalent to two-and-one-half times the number of delegates that she took in FIVE STATES on April 26th.

If you don’t believe that can have an impact on how (or even IF) someone votes, you should have your blood tested for ostrich DNA.

Take a look at a couple of individual states. Sanders won the Hawaii democratic primary in a landslide, taking just shy of 70% of the vote. Of the 25 delegates up for grabs, he came out with 17 and Hillary with 8.

But factor in the Hawaii super delegates who have already announced which candidate they’re endorsing and you have Sanders: 19, Clinton:15. That’s with two more yet to make their decision. And the two currently endorsing Sanders could be convinced to change their vote. So a state that Bernie won with more than double the votes of Hillary, could theoretically end up with a deadlocked delegate vote, 19–19. What happens then? Another coin toss?

The Wyoming Democratic Caucuses handed Sanders a 12-point win, 56%-44%. Yet somehow the 14 pledged delegates were split right down the middle, 7–7. And the four Wyoming super delegates all pledged for Clinton. Sanders wins by double-digits. Hillary walks away with four more total delegates than he does.

In the Washington State Caucuses, Sanders won with a resounding 73% to Clinton’s 27%. 25 Delegates for Bernie, 9 for Hillary.

But wait! There’s more!

Because Washington will actually send 101 pledged delegates to the convention.

So what happened with the other 67? Washington has a multi-step process to elect delegates that would confuse Rube Goldberg. But suffice to say that the final tally, if representative of the caucus results, should be 73 for Sanders and 28 for Clinton.

That’s 48 delegates that Sanders should have already have on his tally sheet that are not being counted. (Note:This has since been resolved and the delegates properly apportioned.)

But what’s really sad; of the 17 Washington super delegates, the 10 that have already declared all said they’re voting for Hillary.

Or take this past Tuesday’s Indiana primary. Sanders emerged victorious taking 53% of the vote and 44 pledged delegates to Hillary’s 47% with 38 pledged delegates.

Except that of the state’s nine super delegates, seven have already endorsed Clinton. The other two have not yet announced their choice. So, as it stands, Hillary ended up with one more delegate than the candidate who won the state by nearly 6%.

It’s clear the will of the average voter does not factor into the decision making process of the average super delegate.

Looking into the future at delegate rich California with its 475 delegates up for grabs, we see that of the state’s 73 super delegates, 52 have already pledged. Every one of the 52 to Hillary Clinton. That means, should Hillary end up with all 73 supers, Bernie would need to win the state by more than 15 points to have even one more delegate than she would end up with.

The deck is stacked. The fix is in. The game is rigged.

Up to this point, the super delegates have endorsed Hillary over Bernie at a rate of 13–1. This despite the fact that the primary and caucus voting ratio is about 4–3. Should that continue, she will end up with 664 supers to his 51. Meaning that the party itself is handing Clinton 25% of the votes she needs to lock up the nomination.

I was chatting with my conservative leaning sister the other day about the democratic race. She commented on the lack of choice when it came to democratic candidates. It seemed to her that it was just Hillary’s turn. We don’t often agree on matters political, but I had to give her this one.

Seriously. Who would want to even TRY to run against the party’s chosen candidate when you know they have the means to give their “chosen one” such a huge leg up? And how many voters share that same, “Why bother? The fix is in.” attitude?

By now I’m sure that Hillary supporters are thinking, “Eh…sour grapes from the opposition.” To some degree, sure.

But put the shoe on the other foot. Imagine that Hillary is the one fighting the uphill battle with the party working against her and Bernie was the one handed the clear glide path to the nomination. It’s easy to go along with a system that’s working for your candidate. It’s only when it works against you that you realize how potentially unfair it can be.

I’m reminded of the 2000 presidential election. The Bush 2 camp’s pre-election night numbers were showing that they could very possibly win the popular vote and still not have the necessary electoral votes to take the White House. They were actually preparing a legal battle against using the electoral college to decide the race. But in fact, the exact opposite scenario played out with Bush 2 losing the popular vote by about a half million, but winning the necessary states to get the electoral votes to become president.

And suddenly, they were A-OK with the whole electoral college thing. Most of us on the left were not. Many democrats were left with the taste of sour grapes over that election.

Some may also point to the current republican fiasco with Trump ending up as the presumptive nominee. Perhaps a GOP super delegate system could have prevented that. Valid point.

But let’s face it folks, the republican party has been tearing itself apart for years now. Trump (and Cruz, as well) are just the end result of a party that has spent the better part of the past 16 years pandering to their most extreme factions.

No, the super delegate system has gotta go. At the very least, they should be apportioned according to the votes in the primaries and caucuses. Or, at the very VERY least, super delegates should be gagged in regard to their preferred candidate until the convention. Let the voters decide without the influence of knowing which way the supers are going to vote. And once that’s played out, if super delegates still want to vote against the will of the people…let the chips fall where they may. But I doubt it would go very well for them.

Because when a major party candidate can lose a state and still come out with more delegates than the victor, something is very wrong.

Especially when the party concerned refers to itself as “Democratic”.

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