I ran across an interesting article at CommonDreams that deals with the history of the Democratic Party's superdelegates. Some very interesting information to be had.
For instance:
Walter Mondale is the principal creator of the superdelegate system which was created in 1964.
The superdelegate system, as we know it, came from the backlash of the 1980s. In January 1982, supported by Mondale, the Hunt Commission and Democratic National Committee reversed grassroots reforms. They rewrote the rules, not to make elections open and fair, but to make sure that centrist (right-wing) candidates maintained hegemony over nominees and party affairs. It was out of fear of new uncontrollable voters that the Commission created a block of uncommitted delegates drawn from a primarily white, male establishment. Mondale, the same insider who prevented elected Mississipppians from taking their seats in 1964, played the pivotal role in creating hundreds of unelected delegates in 1984. Superdelegates comprised 14 percent of the convention in 1984, and eighty-five percent of the superdelegates picked Mondale. Not long after superdelegates picked “the sure winner,” Mondale was trounced in the presidential election. Nevertheless, the superdelgate number passed the 600 mark by 1988. The Jesse Jackson campaign, especially the massive victory over Dukkakis on Super Tuesday, electrified the party and the country. Jackson won 7 million primary votes in 1988, more than Mondale won as the nominee in 1984. Many party regulars were gripped with panic, and some superdelegates organized a stop-Jackson movement within the party. Jackson protested the role of superdelegates, but his challenge went unheeded. Party leaders continued to look for ways to blunt the growing power of grassroots movements. While they could not stop voters from voting, they could dilute the impact of the reform movements by manufacturing added voters as a countervailing force.
Mondale was quite open about the undemocratic aims of the superdelegate system. In a number of talks, he acknowledged that superdelegates were created with the explicit aim of preventing voter insurgencies. He espoused his anti-democratic sentiments in the New York Times, February 2, 1992, where he called for expansion of superdelgate numbers:
“The election is the business of the people. But the nomination is more properly the business of the parties….The problem lies in the reforms that were supposed to open the nominating process….Party leaders have lost the power to screen candidates and select a nominee. The solution is to reduce the influence of the primaries and boost the influence of the party leaders….The superdelgate category established within the Democratic Party after 1984 allows some opportunity for this, but should be strengthened.” Source
I love that last paragraph. What you read here is basically Walter Mondale telling both you and I that we are to stupid to choose who our nominee's should be, so the superdelegates may have to do it for us.
This would mean that no matter how many regular delegates Senator Obama may end up with, and even if he wins the primary, that our smarter superdelegates may decide that Senator Clinton is the one that they wish to run as Presidential nominee, because, after all, they know what they're doing and you and I do not.
Today, faced with enthusiastic, grassroots support for Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton now espouses the old Mondale position (in the guarded, euphemistic language of a candidate), pitting the party regulars against the danger of the popular vote. I do not intend here to compare the merits of the candidates. But there is a question of principle involved in the superdelgate controversy. The very integrity of our elections is at stake. No vote is safe when a self-appointed group can nullify the results of a primary election that displeases them.
All Democratic members of the House and Senate become superdelegates automatically. Let us not forget that George Bush led the vast majority of Democrats by the nose into pre-emptive war, implicating most of the current superdelegates in the biggest catastrophe of recent decades. What makes these individuals wiser than nurses, technicians, custodians, lawyers, teachers, athletes, fire fighters, proprietors-all who voted in good faith in the recent primary? Why don’t the superdelegates do the job they were elected to do-end the war-and let the voters do their job in the primaries-select the next nominee?
I would hope that our so-called superdelegates are at least moral enough to do the right thing and to let the people's wishes stand. If Obama wins with the popular support and the superdelegates choose Clinton, the shit it going to hit the fan and you can bet your asses that John McCain will be the next president, not Clinton. Not to mention the fact that all of the new, younger voters will be totally turned off by politics once again, and if they do decide to vote, they will run to the Republican side of the fence. The Democratic Party will be finished as a legitimate political entity.
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