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Last night, Associated Press – on a day when nobody voted – surprised everyone by abruptly declaring the Democratic Party primary over and Hillary Clinton the victor. The decree, issued the night before the California primary in which polls show Clinton and Bernie Sanders in a very close race, was based on the media organization’s survey of “superdelegates”: the Democratic Party’s 720 insiders, corporate donors and officials whose votes for the presidential nominee count the same as the actually elected delegates. AP claims that superdelegates who had not previously announced their intentions privately told AP reporters that they intend to...

Hillary Clinton is on the cusp of clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, and could move closer as Puerto Rico's primary results are announced Sunday night. The former secretary of state is competing with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to win a majority of Puerto Rico's 60 delegates. Clinton began the day 60 delegates shy of the 2,383 she needs to win the Democratic nomination -- with 1,776 pledged delegates and another 547 superdelegates. Sanders, meanwhile, started Sunday with 1,547 delegates total: 1,501 pledged delegates and another 46 superdelegates. Clinton is closing in on a historic nomination as the first female presidential...

But in spite of the rigged super-delegate system by which Hillary would ascend to a nomination while losing the vast majority of the primary and caucus contests to Sen. Bernie Sanders, it looks like her expiration date is fast approaching When I think about the slow and inexorable—but, of course, inevitable—political demise of Hillary Clinton, I am reminded of T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Hollow Men,” which ends with this haunting refrain: This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. Hillary’s...

The Democratic Party relies too heavily on superdelegates to pick its presidential nominees, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday — though she downplayed the current dispute between party leaders and Sen. Bernard Sanders. Mrs. Pelosi called the fight between Mr. Sanders and party leaders a “family disagreement” and insisted it won’t dent the eventual nominee in the general election. She also dismissed comparisons to the riot-fueled 1968 Democratic convention. “This is an incident. That was a colossal … clash of people,” she said.

Ahead of President Barack Obama’s first visit to Vietnam, the country voted Sunday in once-every-five-year-elections for a rubber-stamp parliament whose membership has already been largely determined by the Communist Party. Amid worries about soaring public debt, a serious budget deficit and China’s aggressive claims in nearby seas, there’s also high hope for Obama’s visit, both in the government, which wants him to lift an arms export embargo so it can better deal with Beijing, and among rights activists who want him to hold to account a repressive one-party state seen as treating its critics abysmally. […] Obama must balance a...

Top Donald Trump advisor Stephen Miller spoke with CNN’s Brooke Baldwin today about Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy. stephen miller hillary Stephen Miller pointed out the obvious: “Honestly, I feel bad for Bernie Sanders supporters and I’ll tell you why. Thanks to super delegates, the Democratic party is on the verge of nominating the most pro-war, pro-Wall Street lawmaker in the modern history of the Democratic Party… Hillary Clinton’s platform is, I want to start wars in the Middle East and then import all the refugees into the United States and other countries without knowing who they are. That’s a recipe...

Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day,” Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) reacted to news that Nevada State Democratic chairwoman Roberta Lange had been harassed by supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign who have alleged the process of delegate allotment has been unfair.

Bernie Sanders is on a roll. He's won the last two Democratic primaries and stands a good chance Tuesday of adding Oregon and perhaps Kentucky to his pile of victories. Yet Hillary Clinton is likely to continue her seemingly unstoppable march to the party's presidential nomination. How can that be? It's not a conspiracy, as some angry Sanders backers suggest, a result of dark magic or a wrinkle in the time-space continuum. Rather, it's the rules that Democrats play by -- rules that now work to Clinton's advantage, even as they thwarted her candidacy eight years ago, when she lost...

Bernie Sanders has a problem. Remember those superdelegates, the Democratic Party leaders and elected officials who can vote for the candidate of their choice? The ones Sanders’ supporters have been complaining about for months? It turns out, to have a shot at beating out Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president, he needs them. A lot of them. […] Clinton won the Guam caucus on Saturday and now needs just 17 percent of the delegates at stake in upcoming contests to clinch the nomination. That means she could lose every single contest by a landslide and still be the...

I see in a few counts that there are "Superdelegates" assigned to Cruz this evening. Where did I miss this ? Does the Republican party have superdelegates now ? Am I missing something ?

Vice President Biden is pictured above reacting to the revelation by Hillary Clinton that the Democratic Party's super-delegates are, unlike them, just regular old human beings. While agreeing that their sole purpose for existing is to heroically protect her from losing the nomination, super-delegates do not, in fact, have super-powers such as: Tax-ray vision, mainstream media invisibility, abortion claws, a magic red tape lasso, debt deflectors, terrorist noise cancelers, tyranny empathizers, and a logic shield made out of laminated race cards. Clinton then went on to clarify that any Democrat has all of those things, but they are actually perks...

Republican National Committeeman Curly Haugland of North Dakota sent a letter on Friday to fellow RNC officials arguing that current party rules allow 2016 Republican National Convention delegates to vote for the presidential candidate of their personal preference during the first round of voting, rather than voting along with the will of voters in their states. Haughland wrote in a letter published by The Daily Caller that the party’s Rule 38, also called “Unit Rule,” specifically allows Republican convention delegates to vote their conscience in every vote at the convention. “Every delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention is a...

You may recall the unpleasant bit of Democratic Party history when former New York Assembly Speaker and Democratic power broker Sheldon Silver was convicted by a jury of his peers on multiple counts of corruption and removed from office. Silver was the man who, for decades, essentially ran the Democratic Party in the Empire State behind the curtains, determining who received state government dollars, which legislators received plum committee assignments and which bills would see the light of day for a vote. He also tightly controlled the flow of budget money, much to his own benefit. Well, his trial date...

With the presidential primaries in full swing, you can expect to hear a whole lot more about delegates and superdelegates over the next couple of months. In Iowa, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton outright tied each other, but Clinton's superdelegates put her over the top. What about in the GOP? Do Republicans get superdelegates, and could they tip the nomination? The technical answer is that yes, the Republican Party does have superdelegates. However, they function differently for the GOP than Democrats, and in 2016, Republican superdelegates will have way, way less power and autonomy than the superdelegates on the Democratic...

While the process to nominate Democrat and Republican candidates for president are essentially the same, there is a notable difference in just who will vote at the nominating committee. That difference comes in the form of something Democrats call a “superdelegate.” You are likely to hear the term – though an unofficial one – quite a bit in the coming months. Here’s a quick look at what a superdelegate is and what they do. What is a Superdelegate? A Superdelegate is a person who is a delegate to the national nominating convention but who is not “bound” to a candidate,...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday amplified her criticism of the Democrats' presidential primary system, saying the states' pledged delegates — and not the superdelegates — should decide the winner. "I'm not a believer in the sway of superdelegates deciding who is going to be the nominee," Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. "I think we have a democratic process where people vote on both sides of the aisle … and that that should determine who the nominee is." Pelosi made waves by making similar comments amid the 2008 primary contest between then-Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary...

The public is finally catching on to the Democratic superdelegate racket, and certainly Bernie Sanders' supporters are.The Democratic Party has some "special sauce" they add to the main course of voter preference for their presidential nominee. A group of politicians and elite members of the party get a say -- a big say -- as to who gets the party nod for president: [T]his group, which consists of 21 governors, 40 senators and 193 representatives, only makes up about a third of the superdelegates. Many of the remaining 463 convention delegates are establishment insiders who get their status after...

Tune into television coverage of the presidential campaign and undoubtedly you will hear from various pundits described as “former campaign strategists” and “political contributors” explaining the latest developments of the race. But in many cases, these pundits — though introduced as neutral experts on campaigns or party politics — in fact have financial ties to the candidates they praise on the air. Several consultants who work at firms retained by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and her affiliated Super PACs appear regularly on the major television networks, frequently touting Clinton. A review of pundits on the major networks and cable news also found one prominent pundit who often praised Jeb...

Good thing you're a bunch of sheep. I’ll be the first to admit we’ve had a lot of fun with Hillary’s losses around here. Because we feel that she is - without question - the worst possible candidate to sit in the Oval Office, we delight in her failures. However, thanks to the way the DNC works, her disastrous 2016 campaign is actually demolishing rival Bernie Sanders, and it would take something of a miracle to reverse that trend. As the AP reports, Hillary has a staggering 481-55 delegate lead. ...If you include her pledged superdelegates.

"Superdelegates help Clinton expand her lead despite NH loss," reads the headline of a piece that moved across the Associated Press wire on Thursday. Despite losing New Hampshire by 22 points to Bernie Sanders, the story notes, Hillary Clinton has actually widened her delegate lead over the senator from Vermont -- winning 87 superdelegates since Feb. 9 to Sanders's 11. Overall, according to the AP's count, Clinton has a 481-to-55 delegate edge, even though among delegates allocated by the first two votes in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders leads 36 to 32. [Snip] That Clinton is winning the lion's share...