Democratic Party rules require most presidential convention delegates to support the candidate on whose behalf they were chosen in primaries or caucuses. But a considerable minority of delegates attend because they occupy offices designated by Party rules — Party leaders, governors, members of Congress, and other party notables.
These superdelegates, are free agents who can support anybody they want to.
The 2016 convention consisted of 4,051 pledged delegates and 712 superdelegates. Supporters of Bernie Sanders complained that Democratic Party leaders, fortified by the superdelegates, unfairly tilted proceedings in favor of Hillary Clinton.
Since 2016 the whole idea of superdelegates has come under attack, with many Democrats urging their complete abolition.
Even terrible situations can always be made worse, and merely because a proposed change is called a "reform" doesn't guarantee it is a good idea. If a proposed reform has a good goal, like making government more democratic, we still need to consider what its actual consequences would be before supporting it.
This proposed "reform" in Democratic Party rules is probably not a good idea. Convention delegates chosen in primary elections or caucuses may reflect popular enthusiasm for particular candidates.
But primaries and caucuses may not put enough weight on the likelihood that the candidate can win the general election.
They also may not put great weight on the compatibility of the candidate's policy views with their party's basic philosophy.
Candidates win primaries and caucuses on the basis of images projected through the mass media. Most voters are not personally acquaintance with them. Party leaders and activists have more opportunity to get get to know possible candidates and to understand their strengths and weakness.
Sometimes primary winners have outlooks that are completely incompatible with their party's basic principles. A notable example was the racist David Duke, the Republican candidate for the Louisiana governorship in 1991, when top Republicans — to their credit — urged voters to hold their noses and support the Democrat.
Sanders supporters claim that it is undemocratic to allow party activists so much influence in determining the Democratic presidential nominee. But they are expressing a rather cramped and naive concept of democracy.
It's possible that effective democratic control over the government would be maximized if primary elections and caucuses were completely abolished and candidates for all parties in the general election were chosen entirely by the leaders and activists of the respective parties.
We should not confuse the degree to which a political party makes its internal decisions democratically with the extent to which the entire political system within which it operates is democratic. Roy Medvedev, a Soviet dissident, once argued that "if there is no genuine democracy in the [Communist] party, there cannot be democracy in society at large."
But a party organized exactly like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would have been completely compatible with a democratic political system if other parties, organized in their own way, had been allowed to compete for the favor of voters. Of course this was not the case in the U.S.S.R.
One or more internally "undemocratic" parties might increase voters' leverage, since such parties might find it easier to stand for something and give voters something to sink their teeth into.
In any event, electorates are poorly equipped to evaluate multiple candidates seeking an office, as is often the case in primaries and caucuses. Party leaders can perform a real service by carefully selecting a nominee who can focus public attention on a few key differences with the candidate of the other major party.
Party leaders can pick a nominee who represents reasonable compromises between the desires of the conflicting factions that coexist uneasily within every major party.
The 712 superdelegates and the 4,051 regular delegates to the 2016 Democratic convention certainly did not overweight the view of party leaders. The Party should think twice before throwing away the practical advantages of powerful leaders in a vain attempt to make its internal decisions theoretically more democratic.
In the meantime, Republicans should consider adding a sizable number of superdelegates to their own future conventions. Superdelegates might have averted the 2016 hostile takeover of the party by Donald Trump, whose opposition to free trade, support for tariffs, toleration of large budget deficits, and many other stands flew in the face of Republican traditions.
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1966, and has been a National Merit Scholar, an NDEA Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School. His college textbook, "Thinking About Politics: American Government in Associational Perspective," was published 1981 and his most recent book is "The Case of the Racist Choir Conductor: Struggling With America's Original Sin." His columns have appeared in newspapers in Michigan, Oregon, and a number of other states. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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