Democratic Super Delegates Explained

[Capt. Stamina]

OK, I haven't heard of this before.

http://www.kptv.com/politics/15065561/detail.html
<snip>
...
There are more than 4,000 delegates in the Democratic National Convention. Some are "pledged" delegates based on voter support in state elections. Nearly 40 percent of them are super delegates whose support is not pledged to a particular candidate. Candidates must obtain 2,025 votes to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

Super delegates can vote for any candidate in the Democratic nominating process. They are not tied to a candidate based on voter preferences in any state. Super delegates may also announce their support for any candidate prior to an election. But because they are "unpledged" delegates to the convention, they may shift their support to another candidate at any time.

The 1972 Democratic National Convention produced George McGovern as the Democratic presidential nominee. Although he won the nomination by a wide margin, he lost the presidency in a landslide to Richard Nixon, winning only one state and 37.5 percent of the popular vote. Because of this, the Democratic Party instituted super delegates as a safeguard to guarantee party control over the nomination process. Political experts say this system was put in place so the party could avoid a mistake by voters in nominating a candidate


Ok, I just wanted to be sure that I read this correctly. The Democratic Party choses the candiate, not the people? If that's the case, then why even bother with all of these debates?

[RichardMacHugely]

The Republicans also use "superdelegates", they just don't call them that. Like the Democratic version, Republican "superdelegates" are important members of the Republican National Committee, GOp members of congress, etc, and like Democratic "supers" they are not allocated through the state primary process, but are free to support the candidate of their choice.

The Dems do use more supers than the GOP, but that's just a matter of degree. This year, about 1/5 of Dem delegates will be "supers", for the GOP the number is about 1/20. In both cases, the supers only come into play when the elected delegate counts are fairly close, indicating an even split in "grass roots" support among various contenders. Even so, the "supers" decide for themselves who they will vote for, they don't vote on marching orders from the national committees, so the comment that the Democratic Party chooses the nominee is inaccurate, as the supers do not vote in a bloc by any stretch of the imagination.

On the whole, I fail to see the problem. The parties should be able to nominate their candidates in whatever damn way they want. With the advent of the primary system, BOTH major parties are using nomination processes that are considerably more "democratic" than the old way, where candidates were selected through deals brokered in the "smoke filled" backrooms at the convention.