Subject: FLAG: USA Today superdelegates editorial
From: "Helmstetter, TJ" <[email-masked]>
To: Comm_D <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2016 12:52:30 -0700

Superdelegates have immense power
USA TODAY Editorial Board2:18 p.m. CDT April 27, 2016

The latest plan to try to stop Donald Trump from claiming the Republican nomination is a classic Hail Mary play. Trailing contenders Ted Cruz and John Kasich have agreed to divide some of the remaining primaries in ways that might give both candidates a better chance of beating Trump head-to-head and denying him a first-ballot victory at the GOP convention.
Never mind whether this can actually work, whether the alliance will last, or whether the party’s anti-Trump establishment should have gotten its act together a lot sooner. It’s hard not to wonder whether Republican officials aren’t looking a little enviously at the other party and wishing the GOP had something the Democrats do: superdelegates.
Superdelegates are the current and former elected officials and Democratic National Committee members who can vote to nominate any candidate they like, without having to worry about who won a state’s primary or caucus votes.
Democrats invented superdelegates to try to stop the party from again nominating a candidate with zero chance of winning the presidential election. In 1972, liberal Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., thrilled primary voters largely on the strength of his strong opposition to the Vietnam War. But McGovern lost the general election catastrophically to Richard Nixon that November, carrying only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.
Despite complaints that they distort democracy, the Democratic superdelegates have never taken the nomination away from the choice of primary voters. Instead, they tend to amplify the margin for the winner, just as they’re doing this year for Hillary Clinton, who leads Bernie Sanders 1,428 to 1,153 in pledged delegates, and 516 to 39 among superdelegates who've announced a preference.
Superdelegates might seem profoundly anti-democratic, but it’s important to remember that political parties aren't pure democracies. They are pretty much free to choose their nominees any way they like. And parties put their name, resources and viability on the line for presidential candidates, which makes the choice crucial for the institution.
Republicans had their own McGovern experience in 1964, when the party nominated ultraconservative Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., who went on to lose almost as disastrously as McGovern did, winning less than 39 percent of the popular vote against President Lyndon Johnson.
Republicans do have some superdelegates, but they’re hardly super. Unlike their Democratic counterparts, the GOP superdelegates have to vote for the candidate who won their state. And even if they could vote freely, they make up only about 7 percent of the delegate population at the GOP convention, which limits their clout.
Democratic superdelegates, on the other hand, make up about 15 percent of convention delegates. In the unlikely event they all voted for the same candidate, they could represent 30 percent of the 2,383 delegates needed to win the nomination.
Although this isn’t an exact science, it seems the Democrats have way too many superdelegates and the Republicans have too few. Ideally, each party would have enough unbound elders to break a deadlock or block a wholly unsuitable candidate, but not so many that they could dominate the nomination process.

From: Brandon Weathersby [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2016 3:49 PM
To: Helmstetter, TJ
Subject: USA Today Editorial

USA Today ed board on superdels

http://www.wisconsinrapidstribune.com/story/opinion/editorials/2016/04/27/superdelegates-have-immense-power/83602612/

Democrats invented superdelegates to try to stop the party from again nominating a candidate with zero chance of winning the presidential election. In 1972, liberal Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., thrilled primary voters largely on the strength of his strong opposition to the Vietnam War. But McGovern lost the general election catastrophically to Richard Nixon that November, carrying only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.

***

Democratic superdelegates, on the other hand, make up about 15 percent of convention delegates. In the unlikely event they all voted for the same candidate, they could represent 30 percent of the 2,383 delegates needed to win the nomination.

***
Although this isn’t an exact science, it seems the Democrats have way too many superdelegates and the Republicans have too few. Ideally, each party would have enough unbound elders to break a deadlock or block a wholly unsuitable candidate, but not so many that they could dominate the nomination process.
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Brandon Weathersby | Communications Director | Democratic Party of Wisconsin
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