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The Democratic National Committee passed new rules Saturday that will sideline superdelegates in the presidential selection process — a radical shift that was pushed by the party’s left-leaning Bernie Sanders wing. The change will sharply reduce the power of party insiders in the 2020 primaries. Coming ahead of November’s crucial midterms, the move also signals the Democrats’ increasing reliance on young progressive voters who they hope will turn out in unprecedented numbers this fall. **SNIP** In 2016, Hillary Clinton used that history to her advantage. As the party establishment’s favorite, she locked up the support of a majority of the...

Democrats voted Saturday to drastically scale back the controversial superdelegate system that gives elected officials and party insiders an outsize say in the party’s presidential nominating process, delivering a significant victory for Bernie Sanders and his supporters ahead of 2020.

Democrats are bullish about their prospects in the November midterms, and are peeking around the corner at a 2020 rematch with President Donald Trump. But first, they’re confronting the lingering frustration from 2016. That bitter nominating fight between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders is front and center in Chicago this week as members of the Democratic National Committee gather for their summer meeting. They’ll decide the fate of so-called superdelegates — DNC members, elected officials and other party dignitaries. Two years after such delegates overwhelmingly backed Clinton, Sanders supporters argue that this group is the epitome of establishment favoritism. As...

Democrats are meeting in Providence, R.I., this weekend to advance changes to their presidential primaries, hoping to end the bitterness that followed the 2016 election — with an emphasis on “hoping.” The push for changes, which began nearly two years ago at the Democrats’ Philadelphia convention, concerns rule revisions proposed by a Unity Reform Commission and vetted by the standing Rules and Bylaws Committee. The most high-profile battles have come over the role of superdelegates, the party leaders and members of Congress whose votes are not pledged to follow the results of any primaries. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who failed...

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has called on Democratic counterpart Tom Perez to explain Rep. Keith Ellison's (D., Minn.) relationship with noted anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. Ellison, the Democratic National Committee's vice chairman, claimed recently he hadn't had contact with Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, since 2006. However, the pair have been together at least three times since 2010. His untrue claims earned a "four Pinocchios" rating from the Washington Post fact checker. Questions over their relationship were reignited following anti-Semitic speech Farrakhan gave in February. The speech also criticized Ellison for having distanced himself from the...

The measure would go a step beyond the Clinton-Sanders Unity Commission proposals to change the superdelegate system. An “absurd and undemocratic idea,” one DNC member said in a memo to party leaders. (please see link for full story)

A commission has been set up to reform the DNC’s nominating process after Hillary Clinton high-jacked it and turned the institution into a Clinton-ized (criminal) organization in a desperate attempt to become President. The changes are backed by the Bernie Sanders wing of the party with the goal to empower the party’s grassroots movement to avoid nominating another loser like Hillary Clinton. Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States October 14, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson – RTS4IJU According to POLITICO: The Democratic Party’s Unity Reform Commission is recommending cutting the number...

Donna Brazile, the former interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), on Sunday said she found no evidence “whatsoever” that the 2016 primary process was “rigged.” “I found no evidence, none whatsoever,” Brazile said on ABC News’ “This Week.” Brazile claimed the only thing she found “was this memorandum that prevented the DNC from running its own operation.” In a piece in Politico on Tuesday, Brazile accused Hillary Clinton’s campaign of exerting improper financial and decision-making control over the DNC before she won the party’s nomination. Asked on Sunday to comment on Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) claim that the 2016 Democratic primary was rigged for Clinton,...

Former Democratic National Committee interim chair Donna Brazile responded to pushback against the in her forthcoming book about the Democratic Party, telling her critics to "go to hell." "For those who are telling me to shut up, they told Hillary that a couple of months ago, you know what I tell them, 'Go to hell.' I’m going to tell my story," she said on ABC "This Week" on Sunday. “Because this is a story of a young girl who started in American politics at the age of 9, who continues to fight each and every week of her life,” she...

Full Title...................'I beat both of them': Hillary Clinton defiantly claims she DEFEATED Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders during the election in interview at her home (not the White House).............................. The 69-year-old made the remark during a new interview about her election loss Clinton received almost 3 million more votes than Donald Trump in the election But the Democrat was defeated by Trump 304 to 227 in electoral college count Clinton also spoke about negative impact sexism had on her chances of winning

'We could have gone into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate'! The Democratic National Committee is currently defending the tactics it used last year to rig the presidential primary against Sen. Bernie Sanders in a class-action lawsuit, brazenly telling voters in a court of law that the party is not obligated to run a fair and impartial primary election. Outraged by how the DNC unfairly boosted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and cleared the way for her primary victory, supporters of Sanders and Democratic donors sued the DNC in June 2016...

Danny JohnstonDecember 20, 2016 Clio Chang and Alex Shephard write in The New Republic about the organizational shake-up and shift in focus at the leftwing media watchdog Media Matters for America. The brainchild of its Clinton ally founder David Brock, Media Matters now seeks to reinvent itself in a post-Clinton world. Brock has recently stated that he hopes to transform his social media platform Shareblue into a “Breitbart of the left.” But Clinton’s electoral loss offers a unique challenge for Media Matters because, as Chang and Shephard report, “[t]he organization had long ceased to be a mere watchdog, having positioned...

ABC Breaking News Newly released State Department emails help reveal how a major Clinton Foundation donor was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field, a decision that appeared to baffle the department’s professional staff. The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later. Copies of dozens of internal emails were provided to ABC News by the conservative political group Citizens...

Nearly one in 10 superdelegates who voted in the Democratic presidential primaries were registered lobbyists, according to a new report, adding some support to Bernie Sanders's claim that "the system is rigged." At least 63 of 712 superdelegates were registered at some point as lobbyists on the state or federal level, according to an analysis conducted this year by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Sunlight Foundation.

The Associated Press (AP) has prematurely called the Democratic primary for Hillary Clinton, despite some 11 million Democrats still waiting to vote in six states and one territory, based off the opinion of superdelegates who have yet to vote. The dominant media narrative is that Sanders is asking superdelegates to thwart the will of the public in order to win the Democratic nomination. But the AP came to their conclusion by a phone survey of the 712 superdelegates, meaning Clinton was declared the winner due to private conversations between reporters and a relatively small handful of Democratic party bosses who...

The Democratic Rules Committee voted down an effort to abolish the role of unbound superdelegates, dealing a blow to Bernie Sanders supporters, many of whom see the superdelegate system as unfair. An amendment failed before the committee Saturday by a vote of 108-58. The amendment received vocal support during discussion from several people who characterized the superdelegate system as "undemocratic" and contrary to the principle of "one person, one vote."

Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), a Hillary Clinton superdelegate, was convicted on Tuesday on corruption charges stemming from a racketeering conspiracy in which the congressman and four associates misappropriated thousands of dollars from federal, campaign, and charitable sources. Fattah and four associates were indicted in July 2015 on 29 corruption charges including racketeering, bribery, money laundering, mail and wire fraud, bank fraud, and falsification of records, among other charges. The Department of Justice said Fattah took an illegal $1 million loan from his failed Philadelphia mayoral bid in 2007 and disguised it as a loan to his consulting company. At...

Just 712 Democratic officials will decide whether Clinton or Sanders wins the nomination. Documents show that's what the party planned all along. This post originally appeared at In These Times. Since its launch, a specter has haunted Bernie Sanders’ run for the Democratic nomination. It’s not his age, though at 74 he would be the oldest president in American history. And it’s not that he’s an avowed socialist, the label that a mere eight years ago was used to smear Barack Obama as a sinister, alien threat to the American way of life. Rather, it has been the so-called superdelegates...

For all the carping about the glaring flaws in the Republican primary process, it’s still nothing compared to the circus that the Democrats have going. With Bernie Sanders all but swept off the stage at this point, resentment over their method of assigning delegates remains and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard seems to have had enough of the Superdelegates who keep their thumbs on the scale throughout the process. With that in mind, she’s kicked off a petition to get rid of them. (Politico) The Democratic presidential primary process may be ending next Tuesday, but the fight among Bernie Sanders supporters...

The Democratic presidential primary process may be ending next Tuesday, but the fight among Bernie Sanders supporters to rid the party of superdelegates and install new leadership at the Democratic National Committee is not. Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard encouraged her followers on Saturday to sign a petition ending the Democratic Party’s use of superdelegates. “Whether you are a Bernie Sanders supporter or a Hillary Clinton supporter, we should all agree that unelected party officials and lobbyists should not have a say in who the presidential nominee of our party is,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “That should be left...