To truly understand the complexities of the Democratic nominating process we must travel back to a time in our nation’s history that seems eerily similar to where we are today. It was a time when young people were becoming more involved in the political process than ever before – in large part fueled by America’s growing dissatisfaction with a war that its critics were describing as “unwinnable”[i]. It was a time where the president’s deregulation of the oil industry spawned passionate objections from the environmental community. And it was a time when the national deficit was rising steeply even as the economy was falling rapidly. Where the rich were getting richer while the poor kept getting poorer. For these reasons, and others – it was a time in America’s history when the president’s popularity dropped to below 20 percent during his final year of office.

        The 1980 presidential election was an election that would ultimately cause the Democrats to make drastic changes in the way they select their party’s nominee. America’s growing unrest with an unpopular administration and a president who was called the most conservative Democratic president since Grover Cleveland[ii] spawned a bitter struggle within the Democratic Party. President and incumbent Jimmy Carter was so out of favor with the American people that within his own party there was a powerful movement to select U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) as the Democratic nominee in lieu of nominating Carter for reelection. This struggle was so intense and the animosity was so high that the 1980 Democratic primaries nearly tore the party apart.

        Although President Carter did win the Democratic nomination he ultimately lost the election to a young actor from California. Democratic Party officials identified the party divide, which they felt was caused by the nominating process, as a key factor in losing the Oval Office. And in 1982 a commission called the Hunt Commission which was led by Gov. James Hunt (D-NC) set-out to change the way the Democrats select their presidential nominees. It was felt that one of the major reasons the nominating process had proven so divisive for the Democrats was the incredibly low voter turnout in the state primaries. Lanny Davis, who helped setup the superdelegate system in 1982, has said of the changes made to the nominating process:   

“That was a considered decision by liberal activists such as myself on the Democratic National Committee who believed we needed some more moderate counterpoint to all of the liberal activists, like myself, who were dominating in the primaries.[iii]”

The concern was that the people who were coming out to vote in the primaries were not representative of the majority of the Democratic Party. Rather, with such low turnout primary voters must only be representative of a small percentage of the most liberal and active Democrats in the party. Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who was chief political consultant to Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000, remembers well the party’s atmosphere at that time:

               

“Party leaders had been underrepresented on the floor of the 1980 convention…Many party leaders felt that the delegates would actually be more representative of all Democratic voters if we had more elected officials on the convention floor to offset the more liberal impulses of party activists.[iv]”

        To address these concerns the Hunt Commission proposed a nominating process that included unpledged delegates, commonly referred to as “superdelegates”. A superdelegate is a delegate to the Democratic Convention that has the freedom to vote for any candidate that he or she chooses. Superdelegates can vote for the candidate they like regardless of the candidate the people they represent have chosen in the state’s primary. Initially set at 14 percent of all delegates, these superdelegates represented party leaders whose experience with campaigns the Democratic Party hoped would serve to moderate the ideological activists in the nominating process. Mann and Ornstein, co-authors of The Broken Branch describe the initial purpose of superdelegates in their New York Times Op-Ed as:

·         “to improve the party’s mainstream appeal by moderating the new dominance of these activists and by increasing the contributions of elected and party officials to the Democratic platform and their impact on the selection of a nominee;

·         to provide an element of peer review, weighing the requirements of the office, the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates and the chances that they’ll win; and

·         to create stronger ties between the party and its elected officials to promote a unified campaign and teamwork government.[v]”

From their initial entrance into the Democratic arena in the 1984 presidential elections, and on – superdelegates have had an important say in who the Democrats select as their nominee. And the 2008 Democratic election won’t be an exception.

        The Associated Press is reporting that neither Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) nor Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) can win the Democratic nomination without the help of superdelegates[vi]. Currently there are 794 superdelegates representing the 50 states, as well as many important U.S. territories and organizations, like: the American Samoa, Democrats Abroad, The District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. These 794 superdelegates comprise about 20 percent of the total delegate votes in the Democratic National Convention. Superdelegates are chosen based on their political pull in the Democratic Party. Among the 2008 class of Superdelegates are: former presidents like former President Bill Clinton, U.S. Senators like Virginia’s Senator Jim Webb, and Democratic Party officials such as the chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia: the Honorable C. Richard Cranwell.

        Superdelegates make-up about 19 percent of Virginia’s total delegate votes for the 2008 Democratic National Convention[vii]. California has the most superdelegates with 71 of 441 total delegate votes[viii]. Depending on where you look, either Puerto Rico or Democrats Abroad[ix] has the lowest number of superdelegates with only one (“1”) and four (“4”) unpledged delegates, respectively[x]. The Virgin Islands and Guam tied for having the highest percentage of their vote coming from superdelegates and actually had more unpledged delegates than pledged delegates with six (“6”) out of nine (“9”) or about 67 percent of the delegate votes[xi]. While these numbers are accurate as of this writing, the numbers can still change. For instance, it is often reported that there are 796 superdelegates, but in fact as of Mar. 4 there were only 794 total superdelegates to fill the 796 spots. According to my conversation with DNC spokeswoman Stacy Paxton, the change in numbers is due to a superdelegate from Maine moving to Florida (currently Florida delegates won’t be seated at the Convention--though this may yet change) in addition to the death of Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA)[xii].

        Since the superdelegates were first installed during the 1984 Democratic primaries the number of superdelegates has grown and importantly the percentage of superdelegates to pledged delegates has also grown. In the 2004 election only 801 of the 4,321 total delegates were unpledged[xiii]. That is about a one-percent increase in the superdelegates share of the total delegate votes from 2004 to 2008. Is this the Democratic Party adjusting for inflation?

        The superdelegate system has been criticized for a number of reasons. Looking at Virginia – in our Feb. 12 primary there were 986,203 people who voted Democratic. Since Virginia has 83 pledged delegate votes, that comes-out to about 11,881 voters per pledged delegate vote. It is disconcerting that my vote is worth only 1/10,000 of the vote of superdelegates like Sen. Jim Webb. I have great respect and admiration for the men and women who lead Virginia’s government. But my respect and admiration do not necessitate feelings of inferiority. Giving past and present government officials votes that are more than 10,000 times more influential than the votes of the citizenry is problematic and is not democratic. Unpledged delegates do not represent the vote – will – of their state or of their people. A superdelegate may vote for the candidate who they believe best represents their interests as opposed to the interests of the people they serve.  And while this may not be advisable for superdelegates who are, or will be, running for reelection; not all superdelegates are elected officials. Indeed, many superdelegates are appointed or even presidents of organizations.

        Superdelegates also fail to represent the people of their party in another very important way – demographically. Nationally the superdelegates are not demographically representative of the Democratic Party. Indeed, the most recent superdelegate list from the DNC identifies only about 34 percent of all superdelegates as female[xiv]. This number is low considering woman make up about 55 percent of the Democratic Party and in the 2000 presidential election “Al Gore’s share of the vote among women was 12 percent higher than among men.[xv]” According to a 2003 study released by The Pew Research Center, “[w]omen tilt Democratic by a margin of 36% to 29%, while men favor the Republican party by a margin of 32% to 27%.[xvi]” Yet, despite the disproportionately higher female representation in the Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee has failed to adjust female representation of superdelegates to mirror the demographics of the party[xvii]. During a Mar. 6 interview for MSNBC’s Today Show, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, stated of the superdelegates:

“They by and large look like the rest of the Democratic Party, are activists – some of them are 21 years old. They’re…gender diverse, they’re racially diverse.[xviii]”

This willful blindness on the part of the Chair of the DNC serves to further entrench the original purpose and integrity of the superdelegate process. 

        One of the overwhelming themes of this campaign for the 2008 Democratic nomination is the theme of change. We’ve seen both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama embrace this theme in many of their speeches, advertisements, and correspondence. Yet the superdelegate system is a system that seemingly disables the American people’s ability to bring change to their party. Giving past and present elected officials a disproportionate say in who will be the democratic nominee places the future of the party in the hands of the past.