Democratic Rep. Diane Russell has gained national prominence for advocating against superdelegates – unelected delegates free to vote for the candidates of their choosing at the upcoming gathering in Philadelphia. “Now, we are taking the fight to end superdelegates to the floor of the Democratic National Convention”. They say his campaign was hurt by Hillary Clinton’s overwhelming support from superdelegates.
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The pesky Democratic superdelegate system that progressives have been railing against for years is about to be a thing of the past.
“I was one of the last people allowed in to the Rules Committee with an enormous line behind me”.
A deal struck at the Democratic National Convention rules committee meeting could change the role of superdelegates in the future, according to a report from the Associated Press. While this is “far from a majority of the 187-member committee”, as Alex Seitz-Wald notes for MSNBC, it does put the amendment past the 25 percent threshold of support within the committee that will be needed to issue a “minority report” and force a vote on the floor of next week’s Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. “Superdelegates disempower voters, they are less diverse than our overall delegates, and they are wildly unpopular”. The liberal wing of the party has for months been pushing to eliminate superdelegates, who are generally establishment Democrats. Since then, other state delegations have passed similar proposals. And the insurgent campaign of Bernie Sanders has been calling foul on superdelegates from the start. Most are party leaders and elected officials, who can function as a check on the rise of a factional candidate with dim prospects of winning the general election. “Nebraska doesn’t have to send superdelegates if they don’t want to, but it’s still up to the DNC to make those rules”, said Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Vince Powers.
However, David Dayen wrote for the New Republic this week, “the superdelegate fight has the greatest likelihood of success, because the role is completely in the control of the DNC, in a way that state-by-state election rules aren’t”.
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With Clinton not ceding a huge amount of ground in the rules committee (Sanders was unable to get all superdelegates bound, and independent voters will still need to register to vote in the Democratic primary process), some signs that ground needs to be made up between the two persist.
