Posted on 06/13/2016 11:33:45 AM PDT by Texas Fossil
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 — the 712 Democratic Party insiders who are free to vote at the nominating convention for the candidate of their choosing.
The corporate media’s early inclusion of the superdelegates in the delegate count created the impression of an inevitable Clinton nomination. Seventy-three percent of superdelegates — 520 of the 712 — have pledged their support to the former secretary of state, but superdelegates are free to change their minds any time before the Democratic National Convention in July.
(Excerpt) Read more at billmoyers.com ...
This is a lengthy article.
This is a very interesting story about the ComDem Super Delegates. When they began, why they have changed.
There is nothing democratic about the Democrats. (now the Communist/Democrat Party)
That’s why I insist on referring to them as the Democrat Party. Because there is absolutely nothing Democratic about them.
After the McGovern debacle in ‘72 they decided that they could not trust their own voters. Don’t be surprised when the GOP does that to US once this election is over.
Yes, I use the Democrat term too. There has never been anything democratic about the democrats.
It makes them very made to have you call their party the Democrat Party. It is however now effectively the Communist Democrat Party.
In the beginning it was the Democratic-Republican Party. I’m not sure when the name was shortened.
“Don’t be surprised when the GOP does that to US once this election is over.”
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They had best think about how they handle the convention. They could very well kill the GOP by their scheming.
I think the GOPe was well on it’s way to doing that to us this time. They didn’t put in as many superdelegates as the Democrats did, but they had plenty to throw the election their way if it was anywhere near close.
Fortunately Trump has such a groundswell of support their scheme was moot.
And now we know about it and the pressure will be on to make the primaries fair.
What made our country great wasn't ‘diversity’ it was the wisdom of our founding fathers to safeguard the rights of ordinary people.
Think of it as ‘the invisible hand’ of politics - much like the ‘invisible hand’ of economics. In both cases ‘the people’ make better choices than committees of elites.
That's what democrats did they 'consolidated their power' by stealing it from 'the people'. - it's not more complicated than that... Oh and yeah Bill Moyers is a jerk.
One thing omitted from the article is that the McGovern rules had hard quotas on race and sex (e.g. women =50% or greater of delegates). This gave radicals like McGovern a head start on getting delegate support at the convention, and made it harder for older constituencies (e.g. southern whites) to get their constituencies the same level of influence.
538 individuals known as “Electors” will decide who becomes the next President of the United States.
About 15% of the Democrats’ delegates are unbound “super-delegates” (official name is “Party Leaders and Elected Officials”)
About 8% (200 delegates) of the Republican Party’s delegates are unbound on the first ballot.
The GOP has free-agent delegates who will be officially unbound at the convention. A bit more than half will be from states or territories that didn’t hold a binding primary or caucus, or states/territories that allow delegates to run unpledged, or have other arcane state GOP rules. Pennsylvania’s “beauty contest” primary produced 54 unpledged delegates, for instance. Guam and American Samoa produced 18.
The rest of the Republican unpledged will be delegates won by candidates who subsequently dropped out of the race. Different states have different rules on when and how these unbound delegates become free to vote for others. But many will arrive in Cleveland able to throw their support to whomever they want.
Everyone knows that political party power structures start from the TOP down. “Superdelegates” are people in the party structure who owe their comnplete loyalty to the party structure and so are nothing more than ‘political chips’ owned by the few TOP party people in the power structure. Its that simple.
That’s no different than the board of directors in the private sector.
Most superdelegates are so by virtue of the fact that they have won political office in general elections. They really don’t owe the party much. The Dems wanted to be sure that there would be plenty of delegates who would know how to win a general election.
Thanks for addition.
“Bill Moyers is a jerk”
Yes, I remember his 1964 TV ad, jerk indeed.
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