The Tyranny of Super-Delegates by Katrina vanden Heuvel

The Editors Cut blog at The Nation ^ | 4 January 2008 | Katrina vanden Heuvel

[EternalVigilance]

Of course, the GOP percentage of super delegates as opposed to regular delegates pales in comparison to the so-called “Democratic” Party.

[ozzymandus]

Katrina is the poster child for brainless, arrogant, limousene liberals. She probably has a Park Avenue apartment with Che portraits on the walls and illegal servants waiting on her hand and foot. I remember when that old geezer “professor” she’s married to (Cohen?) used to appear on CBS News telling us how great and peaceful the USSR was.

[proxy_user]

It would certainly tend to get the Congressional wing of the party and the President in sync.

The Democrats seem to have more of a problem with this than the Republicans.

[SeaHawkFan]

Can’t believe Jesse Jackson and I agree on something.

[Marak]

The turnout broke records and young people

I hope they manage to get the young people fixed up.

[scrabblehack]

Possibly, but it appeared to me that the reason particular Senators and Representatives were chosen to be superdelegates in 1984 was because they supported Walter Mondale, rather than
that they were Senators and Representatives that just happened to support Mondale.

Dukakis had enough delegates in ‘88 to win the nomination without the superdelegates. Mondale did not have enough in ‘84.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Do the Rs have a similar type system? Probably not or she would have mentioned that, right?

Question: Did the Republican and Democratic Parties exist at the founding of the country, or did they get organized later?

The answer, of course, is that they got organized later - and that, comes to that, the Big Two are not the only parties on the ballot. And that leads to another question: When a new party is organized, how does it retain its character? If someone founds a "Right To Life" party, what prevents a bunch of Democrats from simply joining it, and co-opting it? So that it looks like it opposes abortion, but it actually cross-endorses candidates who support it?

When you look at it that way, you realize that you don't want Democrats and Independents deciding who will be the Republican nominee - and that you therefore don't actually want the Republican Party to be fully democratic. It becomes an issue of the right of free association - you have the right not to associate with people you do not want to associate with.

And of course that gets tricky, because then you sound like you want to discriminate against blacks, for example. But at some point, somebody has to have the authority to say who is not a Republican.

[RonF]

Wait ... wait ... I think I’ve gone blind. I could have sworn that I’ve just seen a posting on Free Republic that says that Rev. Jesse Jackson is right about something!

[Tired of Taxes]

Bump

I just caught a report on (of all shows) Anderson Cooper where someone was explaining how the super-delegates in the Dem party could give the candidacy to the candidate who lost the popular vote. (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?) He said that it’s not likely, but possible.