Whether one is backing Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, I would hope there is concern over the thought that superdelegates could potentially override the will of the electorate.
Bernie Sanders’ campaign, which has the backing of far fewer of this special class of party elites, and has expressed concern about party leaders having disproportionate weight in determining the nomination, has started to give mixed messages.
As Steve Benen points out, Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ ever colourful campaign manager has said “the senator would ‘absolutely’ take the Democratic race to the convention, even if Sanders loses the fight for pledged delegates and popular votes. The plan, Weaver said, is to ensure that the race is ‘determined by the ‘superdelegates’.”
Tad Devine, the other Sanders’ strategist much on television, has contradicted that view saying that “Team Sanders believes superdelegates should ‘follow the will of the voters’,” which would mean, as Benen writes, “Devine was describing a scenario in which the Sanders campaign would accept the outcome of the primaries and caucuses.”
One Sanders strategist says the party elite should be given a chance to override the will of the electorate. The other says superdelegates should vote as the electorate has voted.
To be sure, the Sanders’s campaign is kind of stuck given that, as per the New York Times’ Nate Cohn, determining superdelegates based on state-by-state popular votes means “Clinton would have locked up a majority of all available pledged delegates last week.”
Devine’s position may be the democratically defensible approach, but it in no way delivers Sanders the nomination. Weaver’s approach, while laughably inconsistent with Sanders’ outsider campaign, is the only way to credibly stay in until the convention and the only way, however improbable, to win the nomination. I doubt, however, that “reject the will of the people” will work well as a new Sanders’ campaign slogan.
Still, there was Sen. Sanders on Sunday saying that he and Hillary Clinton were heading to a “contested” convention this summer because she will need superdelegates to secure the nomination, even though superdelegates allotted to her in proportion to the popular vote puts her over the top.
As Benen concludes,
When Jeff Weaver argued that superdelegates should elevate Sanders, even if that means overriding the primary results and defying the will of the voters, it was considered pretty controversial. As of yesterday, however, Sanders at least claims to be on board with the same plan.
I don’t like the role of superdelegates in the nomination process, but I like even less the idea of a candidate saying superdelates should follow the will of the people when it is to his benefit but reject that same will when he realizes that it is not.
Looks like Bernie Sanders has become quite the politician.
Retired political staffer/civil servant. Dual U.S./Canadian citizen writing about politics and the arts on both sides of the border.