Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary in a landslide and he finished in a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton in Iowa and, yet, Clinton still leads in delegate count. What gives?
According to Bloomberg News, Clinton has 394 delegates, while Sanders has 44. Sanders, of course, has captured more of the popular and caucus vote — when taken together — than Clinton. The difference is that Clinton has the support of a large number of delegates who are not tied to the primary and caucus processes.
These are the super-delegates (who comprise about one fifth of all delegates during the nomination process) and their existence and potential impact on the primary process has some Sanders supporters up in arms, going so far as to call the system corrupt.
I certainly get the complaint. The notion that the will of voters might be hijacked by a group of establishment decision-makers is certainly appalling, but that’s not what is actually happening. Remember, we are talking about a political party primary and not an open election. We have institutionalized them, to be sure, and have made efforts at opening them to the public and at making them more transparent, but they remain a tool of each political party. The party sets the rules with a few goals in mind, including creating flexibility in the case of changing circumstances, protecting down-ballot Democrats, and protecting the party as a whole. That is why the super-delegates were created. But that means that insurgent candidacies — whether they are Bernie Sanders today or Gary Hart, or for that matter Barack Obama — have built-in disadvantages. (The GOP has used variants of this “system rigging” — the winner-take-all primaries in 2008 were supposed to result in a quick win for the establishment candidate.)
I’m not a big fan of the super-delegate system — I tend to support systems that empower the grassroots — but its existence is not a conspiracy, as we have been hearing from some. It also could prove damaging to Democrats if they cannot find some accommodations for party insiders and the insurgent Sanders people within the party.
I offered this analysis on Facebook, and I think it is worth repeating here (in edited form). The super-delegates
were designed as a firewall against insurgency. This came into play oi 2008, before Obama proved himself and shifted the landscape. It is coming into play now, though in this case there is a smaller likelihood that they’ll be moving into Sanders’ column. To me, this has been a dangerous time bomb for the Democrats akin to the disruptions of ’68 and ’72 when the party fractured along generational and racial lines and helped Nixon win twice. (Yes, McGovern proved a weak candidate, but he also was abandoned completely by party insiders.) There is nothing that can be done with it now, but it is something that any party committed to its grassroots should be concerned with.
The issue boils down to stability and party needs versus the desires of grassroots activists and new voters attracted to the primaries by the insurgent candidate — Obama in 2008 and Sanders today.
There needs to be a balance, which occurred in 2008 and that I fear may not be possible this time out. I think the historical narratives that have come to explain 1968 and 1972 ignore this. In 1968, Humphrey was the establishment candidate (after LBJ dropped out and RFK, the only one who could have unified the party, was assassinated). There was an insurgency in play, though, which grew from the civil rights and anti-war movements and that made a lot of noise. The party establishment (I hate this word, but it seems the best one for this) aggressively shut out the insurgents, who then stayed home or voted for third-party candidates (there also was the right-wing, racist backlash that coalesced around Wallace). Humphrey then lost one of the closer elections in American history. Had the party recognized the insurgency and sought to bring them on board, unifying the party, one could argue, it might have been different. I’m not saying this re-unification could have happened, but the antipathy to the insurgents certainly damaged the party’s prospects. The 1972 race was beset to a degree by similar factors. We all know that McGovern was a flawed candidate, but no one ever talks about the insider backlash against the insurgency that took a likely losing candidate (his weakness combined with Nixon’s solid approval ratings) and turned it into a landslide. Somehow, the party — any political party — needs to find a way to allow for establishment and insurgent tendencies to co-exist and for some kind of unity to be constructed.
My fear, as I said, is that the rhetoric on the Democratic side could fracture the party. Sanders’ supporters — many of them, anyway — already have signaled that they may not back Clinton in the general election if she wins the nomination. Many Clinton supporters are saying the same thing. Given the stakes — as many as four Supreme Court justices are expected to retire within the next eight years, including two from the liberal wing, the fate of Social Security, the Affordable Care Act and the regulatory system — that would be foolish. Balance, as I said, is needed.
As for the super-delegates, let’s get rid of them, but let’s also realize that doing so will not really empower the grassroots. The party, as an institution, will find other ways to protect its interest.
The issue, in my mind, is not party rules, but the larger electoral system. It was designed to moderate the electorate and tamp down inflamed passions — i.e., political insurgencies. If we want to empower the grassroots, we are need to do more than change political party rules. We are going to have to open the system.
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Hank Kalet 