The whole notion of superdelegates reeks of backroom deals in smoke-filled rooms.

Howard Dean brought a breath of fresh air into the Democratic Party machinery when he decreed a 50-state campaign to make Democrats competitive thoughout the country. This was designed to make the will of the people known throughout the land. To have the will of the people trumped by non-elected superdelegates flies in the face of Dean's democratic initiative.

Now Dean is faced with the problem of what to do with the superdelegates at the convention. In line with his being of the "democratic wing" of the Democratic Party, he should press for Ari Emanuel's solution: have those superdelegates cast their ballots for the winner of the popular vote.

Insofar as Florida and Michigan are concerned, the rules state that those delegates shouldn't count--and that they should be seated only after the winner of the convention as been announced. I speak as a disenfranchised Florida voter. my vote didn't really count because of the chicanery of the Republican state leadership in scheduling the Florida primaries early. But Democrats shouldn't stoop to letting Republican hijinks poison our own wells. Let's follow the rules that were set up and try to do a better job of scheduling the primaries next time.

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I think the whole concept of super-delegates is as anti-democratic (and anti-Democratic) as anything I've heard of. Why have an election if the party powerful get to pick the nominee? Super-delegates should either be abolished (best) or should vote according to the choices of the voters in their state. No way should they be able to override the elected choice of the people.

Side note, the current elected delegates from Florida and Michigan should not be seated. If those states are to have delegates, and they should, there should be a new and fair election, which the national and state parties should pay for, since they created the mess in the first place.

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In the abstract, I think Ari Emmanual has a good point. The idea of a couple of thousand faceless, unknown, insiders operating as Super Delegates and picking the Democratic Nominee is pretty scary.

But when Ari put a face on one of the Super Delegates, and the name was Rahm, I had to start thinking about it another way.

In electing Rahm to Congress, voters have already ceded over great swathes of responsibility to him and have made a clear statement of trust.

Rahm Emmanual is not part of the problem. He has served very ably in the Congress and has been one of most powerful forces of restraint in this government.

As dissatisfied as we are with Iraq, if it weren't for people like Rahm Emmanual using the institutional powers, the Bush Administration would be far worse.

In addition to resisting the Bush Administration, Rahm Emmanual has been an advocate for an alternative future: a progressive future. Rahm is one of the people who want to use the government to empower the citizen, to build a sense of communalism and humanity in our politics.

Most of all, Rahm and the other Super-Delegates are putting in the work. They sit through all the dreary committee meetings, they attend all the community meetings and hear our gripes.

They spend their days and nights doing the nitty gritty work that makes government function.

Their interest and their input are essential. Through this work, they know the whos and whys.

It does not strike as wise to through away their experience and their ability to bargain with and affect the candidates and affect the outcome of the deadlocked campaign.

Yes, the Super-Delegates will become important only if the leading nominees are deadlocked in the popular selection.

Someone has to decide who the candidate will be in the event of a popular deadlock.

I think it is better that we know how those people will be and have rules in place for the decision going in.

The alternative is to make some sort of ad hoc deal at the dead-locked campaign.

That is how we Democrats get fabulous Presidential candidates like our 1920 nominee John Davis.

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Side note, the current elected delegates from Florida and Michigan should not be seated. If those states are to have delegates, and they should, there should be a new and fair election,

The people who went to the polls in those states voted for Hillary Clinton as the nominee of the Democratic Party.

They voted legally and in good faith.

They should not be disenfranchised.

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Remember that this isn't a direct election to office but a political party deciding who will be its quadrennial standard bearer. The superdelegates are party members who, in many cases, will have to run on the same ticket as the nominee. If the nominee is elected, they will have to govern with that person.

It seems that the best inoculation against superdelegates flouting the will of a majority of primary voters is the backlash in a general election. If the delegate count is deadlocked, that is a different matter.

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How does not seating delegates from a certain state promote democracy? Sure they broke the rules, but perhaps a more fitting punishment would be to make them do their primary over again, the cost alone would be a punishment. But not representing the voters, who had no hand in setting the primary date? That does not sound like democracy and it leaves us open to charges of being just like the Bush crew when they stopped the vote counting.

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The US has never been a democracy and the population has no Constitutional right to actually directly choose a President. We either need to revamp an outmoded system to reflect the popular vote or stop complaining about the Electoral College. I'm holding out for one of those cleansing revolutions that Jefferson called for every so often to give us the ability to dump this whole fiasco and start over again. Unfortunately, I don't believe the citizens of the USA have the will for a real fight.

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The U.S. citizens have no will for any real fight, for anything. If we cannot get it together to fight the Fascist tide sweeping our Country right now, to fight the exaggerations of terror threats stirred up to keep us in fear and thus give up our freedom, then how can we get anyone to fight about a voting system that reeks of fraud and disenfranchisement?

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Let me first state my lack of a total understanding of the complexities of the Super-Delegate tradition. This is the first time I've ever bothered to participate in any caucuses, so (not unlike a Freshman on the first day of classes), I don't feel I should already have an opinion on the answers to the Final Exams. I'm approaching all this with an open & curious mind.

I must admit that when reading up on the caucus-to-convention process, I was somewhat disturbed by the description of Super-Delegates ("people who are recognized for giving of their time & skill to the goals of the Party", or some such). Not "surprised", mind you. The concept fits in well with human nature as a whole; stick around long enough & get friendly with the right people (who got friendly with the right people themselves at one point), & eventually you'll be entrusted to do the sort of back-room dealing that no one else has the time or stomach for.
We should be somewhat comforted that this group has a public name & at least a few faces to go with it, shouldn't we? It could be much, much worse.

What I'm noticing in the article & comments is an ambivalence towards the concept of "delegation" itself. For us non-Super delegates, the selection process is pretty simple; at the precinct caucus, we raise our hands. The other people at said caucus then vote to accept us or not. At the caucus I attended, everyone was voted "accepted", at which point those who voted to accept had "delegated" us the task of continuing through the process. Other than getting head-counts of which Senate candidate we were supporting (in my case, Undecided), & adjusting for alternates & gender-balance (a nice feature of Minnesota Party rules), there were no attempts to extract promises on particular issues or pursue disqualifications based on personal beliefs. By not individually challenging prospective Delegates, caucus attendees willingly delegated those of us standing to wield our minimal influence as we best saw fit.

So, why is it that these Super-Delegates are held to a different standard? Is it because these Delegates aren't necessarily "elected" to their positions? Well, neither are us sub-Super ones, in any real sense! We simply showed up with our own versions of "good intentions" & a desire to participate. Unless I'm woefully ignorant on this, no one is holding a gun to my head to staunchly hold to my public declaration of "Undecided" in the next round. If, for instance, my conscience dictates that I eventually support one potential Senator over another, then the people who "delegated" me (read "abdicated their responsibility for") that choice can't really complain about it, can they? Isn't the assumption that I will change my mind?

Now, am I pleased that Rahm "I Bleed Kool-Aid" Emanuel is a Super-Delegate? Hardly. Or that many other Super-Delegates will be similar professional or semi-pro power-broker types? No. But outside of dismantling & reconstructing the apparatus to be more transparent, it seems to me that we've got to work with what we already have in place. That's one reason I'm participating this time around; I want to see how it all works, get an idea of just how "broken" it really is, & then pursue possibilities for fixing it.

Are we complaining about Super-Delegation because we don't understand the nebulous business of Super-Delegate selection/appointment, because it strikes us as un-democratic? Is one reason it's un-democratic the fact that they might exert their influence in ways we don't "like", or didn't pre-approve? If so, then aren't all of us small-fry Delegates just as un-democratic?

Just thoughts & questions from someone with little more than "clue one" about how this all works. Also, if anyone could direct me toward the proper asses to kiss to upgrade my status from normal to "Super", I'd be most obliged ;-)

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they come from an arrangement by which the candidate who loses the popular vote is favored in the assignment of delegates, so that, for instance, Obama lost the popular vote in Nevada but won more pledged, assigned, not elected delegates.

This setup also does not reflect the will of the people and it is misleading to say these are "elected" delegates. They are not elected. They are assigned by a procedure that does not directly reflect the actual popular vote.

The only way to reflect the actual will of the people is to use the popular vote to elect the candidate. No pledged, assigned, not elected delegates and no superdelegates.

Whoever receives the most votes from Democrats should be the nominee, not the one who got the most pledged, assigned, not elected delegates or the one the superdelegates choose.

No one can then complain about that vote - although Obama has filed a lawsuit challenging the Nevada vote. Not sure if this has been resolved.

I also think the Michigan and Florida primaries should be rerun as primaries, since that is what these were supposed to be. Let both states redo the primaries and the vote would reflect current desires of the party, not the "early vote" count that some have claimed didn't reflect what voters thought on the actual day of the vote.

I think it is totally undemocratic to disallow the desires of the people in these states. To prevent a re-doing of the primaries is also to subvert the democratic process. And lobbying against redoing primaries at all or against redoing them as primaries would be just as undemocratic as using superdelegates to choose the candidate.

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It's hard to imagine a scenario where two candidates are precisely 'deadlocked.' One should surely have some sort of advantage over the other...

On the other hand having political professionals select the candidate from two peers that is most likely to be elected is compelling.

The problem is that 'SuperDelegates' represent almost 20% of all delegates and in addition to the 250 or so elected federal officials, there are loads of diplomats, generals, and minor officials who are (drum roll please) mostly from the Clinton administration--hence Hillary's large advantage of SuperDelegates.

Michigan and Florida should not be counted period and Hillary's shenanigans in this regard as well as her meddling in AZ show her as the 'willing to win at any cost' unethical champion of the Bush legacy of election stealing...pity our shredded 'democracy'...

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BLUE DOG Democrats? My dear, They are not progressive and they are the handiwork of Mr Emanuel and the DLC, the conservative branch of the dem party.
They are part of the "why" nothing has really changed in DC, despite the dem majority.

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The issue of super delegates and the democratic party is unconscionable. Currently Obama is ahead in the popular vote and behind in the delegate vote. We can not have 800 party insiders decide the primaries for us! I have created a protest page here

http://www.popularprimaryvotenow.com

If you think this is an issue please add a comment to the protest page of the website. I will print out all the comments and give them to the Democratic party.

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Simply said, let's imagine that there is a super duper prize event. Generally, the employees of the group that put on the super duper prize event are ineligible for the prizes themselves. In this case,the selection of the endorsed candidate, the Super Delegates get the prize or get to pick the winner of the prizes as an employee would. It's not impartial, it's stacked. It's not allowed anywhere but here. But heck, it's the rules, so we can't change the game now, can we, in the middle? Damn.

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Just another article about what your bro has been up to in the past few years:
http://www.counterpunch.org/
walsh10142006.html

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Mr. Emmanuel, kudos for your article. Log this comment in as one on your side of the proposition. God forbid that the people will ever really be allowed to decide a matter as important as who might be representing them as their nominee.

I recall a comment by Nancy Pelosi a while back. I can't remember the gist of it, which was concerning some minor issue, but that which I do remember was her referring to herself and her colleagues as the "leaders" of the people? Whatever happened to the quaint idea of "representive?" I always thought it was called The House of Representatives, not The Palace of Leaders. If many others in this country are infected with this same old worldview, I can see why the Party might not trust them with an irreversible role in determining who their leader might be.

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Thanks for opening the door to one of the many smoke-filled rooms which still exist in the corridors of our governmental structure. The current two party system desperately needs to be revamped. Their stranglehold on the primary system and the fact that it can be manipulated by so few players is more than ample evidence of that.

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Representative democracy is obsolete.

Government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Direct Democracy

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was on tv telling a talking head that he would vote for Mrs. Clinton, no matter what the state primary results were. While I have nothing against Mrs. Clinton and would vote for her if she became the Democratic nominee for president, I sent my senator (Menendez of New Jersey) a very irate e-mail telling him I elected him to represent the people of New Jersey, NOT the Democratic Party, and I assured him that although I am politically active in supporting progressive candidates, I would NEVER volunteer for his campaign if this is his attitude, in fact I would probably work for his opponent. I have heard nothing from the egotistical coward.

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I was Chair of Hardin County Iowa Democrats. 11 of my friends are staunch unyielding Republicans who entered the county caucus and registered as Democrats so they could vote for Obama. They told me they did so as he would be the Democrat easily defeated in November. I have close friends in Virginia and Maryland, and they report the same as the GOP wants a candidate they can defeat, fearing a Clinton victory will spell doom for McCain.

In Iowa students can pack the caucuses, but rarely vote in the general election. Obama swept them, but not the middle aged and older Iowa farmers, industrial workers, and hourly wage earners who want a candidate who understands the economy: bread and butter issues, the rising and near-prohibitive cost of health care, the decay of educational excellence, and the rise of crime against women and their inalienable right to choose the destiny of their own bodies--they voted for Clinton.

As for superdelegates--they are elected because their constituents trust them. If Ari had her way and all superdelegates vote the way their state voted (never unanimously) they would either have to divide their votes proportionately, or for the candidate who carried their state. That means that Ted Kennedy and John Kerry must vote for Clinton and support her candidacy vigorously.

This will not happen. As for the older voters, those who vote and contribute to candidates (very few students have contributed more than a few token dollars to Obama or Clintion), they, like me, will not vote in the presidential race in November if Obama is the candidate. Obama is the worse choice possible for the Democrats. It would be better for Democrats to write in their choice rather than vote Obama.

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"I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating."

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they are held by political parties to determine who's the best candidate for the party. to think otherwise is naive.

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It's pretty hypocritical for someone like you to write an article calling for democratic purity. You're one of Obama's biggest bundlers, and in that line of work you exert more influence in dollars over the electoral process than a small state. You AND your bro should just stay the hell out of politics, in my opinion.

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