Big Bernie Win: DNC to Reduce "Super Delegates" by 60%

[Fluffernutter]

Why have primaries in the first place?

Why not go back to the days of decisions being made by party bosses in smoke filled rooms?

After all, it's the convention where the party decides who will be the nominee. The public (i.e. the voters) don't really have a say. The primaries are really just a barometer as to what the general public was thinking during that particular day.

 

[Lead]

Though it may be a move Bernie wanted, he still didn't win if you take away the super delegates.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Let me clarify: By "the people" I didn't mean party apparatchik's beholden to corporate donors.

Er, right. I'm guessing that when the people don't vote for your preferred candidate, that means the people didn't choose.

 

[D3thr0n3d K1ng]

Murka has too many anti-democratic apparatuses for a country that pays lip service to democracy. The more of these that get dismantled, the better.

 

[Anung Un Rama]

Though it may be a move Bernie wanted, he still didn't win if you take away the super delegates.

This is really just the DNC making meaningless gestures to appeal to Bernie supporters, so they can point and say look what we did to appease you.

 

[Pinyin]

 

[Lead]

This is really just the DNC making meaningless gestures to appeal to Bernie supporters, so they can point and say look what we did to appease you.

They are a bit late for that but I suppose it's a decent measure. I'd be more interested in states coming together to come up with a more structured primary schedule than these type of things.

 

[Anung Un Rama]

They are a bit late for that but I suppose it's a decent measure. I'd be more interested in states coming together to come up with a more structured primary schedule than these type of things.

Very late. But they're in shambles and they rigged the game against the most popular politician in the country so they have to do damage control.

 

[Lead]

Very late. But they're in shambles and they rigged the game against the most popular politician in the country so they have to do damage control.

Clinton had essentially taken control of the DNC by before the primaries went into full swing. The candidates usually have way more power compared to the RNC or DNC now because the money is flowing over to them and their PACs. It's very hard to not expect more of this in the future from either party because of that fact.

 

[Anung Un Rama]

Clinton had essentially taken control of the DNC by before the primaries went into full swing. The candidates usually have way more power compared to the RNC or DNC now because the money is flowing over to them and their PACs. It's very hard to not expect more of this in the future from either party because of that fact.

Agreed. So depending on who the banks and corporations support, they might (likely) pull similar shenanigans. But leading up to that, they're going to act like they're morphing into the BNC so Sanders doesn't go third party.

 

[Space]

Strongly disagree that it's a move in the right direction. Democrats should look at what happened to Republicans and realize that their advantage is not superior voters but superior institutions and earned trust in those institutions.

 

[franklinstower]

Look at his initial claim(@Rational Poster), and get back to me. Also, show me where I said he would have won. I'll wait.

Ding ding ding. We have a winner here. Your defeated opponent is shifting goalposts.

 

[franklinstower]

Keep pretending that the media counting those superdelegates for clinton, and saying over and over, that Bernie couldn't win, wasn't meant to depress voter turnout for Bernie.

Maybe the uninformed rubes will buy it

Where we went in to vote there were signs everywhere pointing towards the voting rooms. All the signs read HILLARY with an arrow pointing towards the booths.....

 

[franklinstower]

The superdelegates aren't why Bernie lost. It was just one of many ways they attempted to depress voter turnout for Bernie.

From polling areas heavily where Clinton was leading, and barely polling areas Bernie was winning. To setting debates not in prime viewing spots, and limiting debates because Clinton had the name recognition.

I can't believe that people are still trying to pretend that the DNC didn't cheat Bernie and his supporters.

This is all fact. And lets not forget that corporate medial covered Hillary 80% more often than Bernie and when they did it was very heavily biased towards pro Hillary coverage and anti Bernie coverage. Our institutions failed us in the election. NPR was also complicit in the bullshit.

 

[forum poster]

 

[Pinyin]

 

[Jack V Savage]

This is really just the DNC making meaningless gestures to appeal to Bernie supporters, so they can point and say look what we did to appease you.

This is a good illustration of why the Intercept/DeBoer types are effectively just the left-outreach arm of the GOP propaganda machine. These people don't care about improving the lives of real people and don't actually want to change left politics. They just want to claim some kind of high road, while encouraging left-leaning voters to sit out elections and let politicians with a single-minded devotion to upward redistribution of wealth win and enact bad policy.

 

[ImNotSurpisedDonks!]

Don't matter bro. What does matter is the election fraud and the machine rigging - that is why Bernie lost. The only way to do away with 'fraction magic' is to go to paper and pen ballots. As Stalin once famously said, "It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes."

 

[Gunny]

Not less total delegates, less super delegates. They would apportion the delegates to the primary vote. So, more delegates up for grabs in the voting and caucusing. Also, she wouldn't have been presented as having this big lead the whole time, because she wouldn't have had a built in advantage. That's huge psychologically to voters.

I think Bernie would have pulled it off, and beat Trump by 3-5 points in a comfortable General Election win.

TBH, I think the argument that this change would have helped Bernie is a tricky one to make. I think you're absolutely correct that Hillary's entire campaign strategy, both in the primaries and the general, was to carefully cultivate this air of inevitability that attempted to exclude the very notion of any legitimate challenger. Starting with a huge superdelegate advantage and pumping that narrative to the press was an important part of that strategy and I think it did have the effect of suppressing other establishment democrat challengers. By the same token, however, I think it may be the very thing that created the opening for Bernie. Not only did the superdelegate structure alienate a measurable percentage of Dems, it made it possible to concentrate Hillary-opposition votes into a smaller pool of (and ultimately only one) potential candidates. While I do believe superdelegates helped Hillary I suspect removing them would empower some other mainstream dem more than it would Bernie.

 

[Jack V Savage]

TBH, I think the argument that this change would have helped Bernie is a tricky one to make. I think you're absolutely correct that Hillary's entire campaign strategy, both in the primaries and the general, was to carefully cultivate this air of inevitability that attempted to exclude the very notion of any legitimate challenger. Starting with a huge superdelegate advantage and pumping that narrative to the press was an important part of that strategy and I think it did have the effect of suppressing other establishment democrat challengers. By the same token, however, I think it may be the very thing that created the opening for Bernie. Not only did the superdelegate structure alienate a measurable percentage of Dems, it made it possible to concentrate Hillary-opposition votes into a smaller pool of (and ultimately only one) potential candidates. While I do believe superdelegates helped Hillary I suspect removing them would empower some other mainstream dem more than it would Bernie.

This is true. My choice (O'Malley) likely would have won if Clinton hadn't done such a good job locking up endorsements before the race began.