Super delegates

March 13, 2008 - 11:10am

Torricelli on Super Delegates

The rules that govern the Democratic Party's Presidential Delegate selection process are the result of thirty years of conflict. National conventions have been divided and reform commissions have fought into many long nights. There's really only one major reform in recent decades that represented a consensus: everybody recognized the need for the Super Delegates.

More than 20 years after their creation, Super Delegates have finally entered the center stage. Without their support neither Barrack Obama nor Hillary Clinton could get nominated. The as usual ill-informed media and the idiot pundits on cable television have reacted with horror. The process, they contend, has been hijacked and some abomination has manipulated the process and denied it legitimacy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When the 1980 election ended the Democratic Party was in a shambles. President Carter had lost in a landslide. Successive insurgencies in 1968 and 1972 left deep ideological scars on the Party. Increasingly the Congressional Leadership was distancing itself from the Party activists that dominated the Presidential nominating process. The national political conventions were opportunities to write platforms that everyone ignored and produced streets brawls disguised as a nominating process on national television. The result was the Hunt Commission. more >
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