Superdelegates: Waiting for the Un-Democratic Convention

A modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville diagnosing the health of American democracy would probably criticize the outsize influence of special interests and powerful lobbies. He might rant against an apathetic and uninformed public, and scorn the 80 million people of voting age that decided to stay at home in the last presidential election. He would probably write about the hundreds of millions of dollars in funds raised to buy 30-second television ads, and how money has become a better indicator of electoral success than a well-reasoned argument or a good debate. The media, the military-industrial complex, the electoral college, the Florida recount, the butterfly ballot, would all be included along with the usual suspects to be blamed for the bad shape of the world's first modern liberal democracy. And yet the now famous superdelegates, which will supposedly decide the Democratic primary this summer, could become the last straw for many, and the most embarrassing chapter for most.

Superdelegates, which account for one-fifth of the Democratic Party Convention, are members of Congress, governors, former presidents and vice presidents, party insiders, and members of the Democratic National Committee, including city council members and union leaders. These are not chosen by primary voters, nor are obligated to give their vote to the candidate preferred by a majority of the people. Thus, as it is often mentioned these days, one could envision a scenario where Barack Obama ends up winning twice as many state primaries and caucuses as its opponent, obtains more delegates and more votes, and still loses the nomination because party insiders prefer Hillary Clinton. Until now, very few knew those superdelegates even existed. As a matter of fact, most people that volunteered their time, donated their money, spent hours in a caucus somewhere, or simply went to the voting booth, believed they were participating in a beautiful exercise of democracy at its finest.

The party's primaries were a largely undemocratic affair for most of its history, and were dominated by big-city bosses and party machines. After the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, in passionate contest for primaries with Eugene McCarthy, the DNC gave the nomination to Hubert Humphrey, who supported the Vietnam war and had not won a single primary. As a reaction to the public outrage -the convention itself was mobbed by protesters who were tear-gassed-, the party revised the primary process to make it more democratic and ensure that the will of the people decided the nominee. However, after the consecutive nomination of mavericks like George McGovern or Jimmy Carter, the party introduced the superdelegates to control the fervor of activists and the momentum of insurgent campaigns and non-establishment candidates. Party insiders and elected officials, or so it was argued, would be better judges of a candidate's potential electoral success. They did not, however, get off to a good start. Superdelegates propelled the nomination of Walter Mondale, who lost 49 states to Reagan in the 1984 general election. Since then, people forgot about them. Each time, a clear front-runner emerged early in the race, and superdelegates simply crowned him en masse at the convention. Over the last years, the closest thing to a brokered convention took place in a fictional election, in the last season of the American television serial drama The West Wing.

It is not at all clear that Clinton would get a majority of superdelegates, or that Obama will reach the convention with a lead in states, delegates, and votes. It should also be noted that many Obama supporters welcomed the idea of a brokered convention when they thought Clinton would lead in votes and delegates. They knew the rules of the game. But most voters didn't, and many will feel understandably disillusioned, if not enraged. Watching so many of these party insiders relish at their role as king makers and boast about receiving calls from Bill, Hillary, Chelsea, and the Obama campaign is unsettling enough. The political system of the United States allows for someone to lose the popular vote but win the electoral college and the presidency, and for thirteen state legislatures in the smallest states representing 4 percent of the population to block any amendment to the constitution, among other notoriously anti-democratic features. But you can chalk these up to the federal structure of the United States. The power of superdelegates in the Democratic party, however, has no other explanation than the desire to control and tame democracy. After getting so many people involved and excited, breaking records of political participation in each contest, the will of the majority should determine the nominee, whether this is Hillary or Barack. Otherwise, they should skip the balloons, the confetti, and all the happy talk about the power of democracy at work.