Vermont Democrats Oust SuperDelegates

[Equinox Moon]

May 22, 2016

On Sunday Vermont Democrats were clear that superdelegates no longer represent the populace.

In a state in which Bernie took 100% of the delegates there was little to debate.

A superdelegate vote in Vermont held the weight of 10,000 votes.

The article has more info...
http://bernthepress.com/2016/05/22/vermont-democrats-oust-superdelegates/

[KingFlorez]

1. Sanders is a superdelegate pledged to himself

Oops

[cali]

2. Wait, you think that's weird or unseemly?

[Demsrule86]

3. Which means they will have

less influence in 2020.haha.

[Equinox Moon]

4. Who is "they"?

[Tarc]

7. "They" == the Vermont Democratic Party

Without DNC approval, they will likely have their future delegates halved, or stripped entirely.

[Exilednight]

10. only if the Democratic Party wants to lose Vermont for a very long g time.

[cali]

12. Huh? The only thing they'd lose it to is the Vermont Progressive Party

which is somewhat aligned with the dems. Btw, on Sunday the VT Democratic Party endorsed Bernie for the Presidency.

[Tarc]

16. Lol, I can only feel pity if you actually believe that

Republicans are becoming scarce in New England, except for the occasional governorship.

[cali]

19. I hate that occasional governor thing

Its like people want to prove they're bipartisan.

[Tarc]

20. I know, we've suffered it over here at times too

Like Craig Benson, oily little snake. I met him when he ran Cabletron ages ago.

[Gothmog]

5. These changes are subject to DNC approval

Good luck with that

[Recursion]

6. I don't think Vermont can actually tell the Democratic Party how to do its nomination rules (nt)

[Hiraeth]

23. then, we will be witnessing the beginnings of the break up of the Democratic Party as we

currently know it.

[firebrand80]

28. Surrender to the VT legislature or else? nt

[karynnj]

35. Like any state, they can pass resolutions for their representatives to the DNC to bring there

That does not mean that VT will win at the national level. It likely does mean that this UNANIMOUSLY adopted resolution will probably be heard at the national level. Note that it is for future elections and has nothing to do with 2016 or the platform.

I went to the convention and this VT digger article covers what happened there well.
https://vtdigger.org/2016/05/22/states-democratic-convention-is-almost-all-bernie-all-the-time/

[Equinox Moon]

8. Reform is happening...

The movement to get rid of SuperD's is gaining momentum.
This will be part of the national convention agenda.

[oberliner]

9. Getting rid of the Super D's means that Hillary wins

Since she will have more pledged delegates than Bernie.

[Equinox Moon]

11. Getting rid of superD's will become effective in future primaries

It will make sure the democratic party is actually democratic verses strong armed by the establishment elite. When one SuperD = 10,000 (or more) individuals, that is not democracy. When the SuperD's pledged their candidate and the primaries had not even started, is a problem.

[BlueStateLib]

13. You mean where republicans and independents choose the democratic nominee

no thanks

[Equinox Moon]

14. A super delegate is someone within the democratic party

[George II]

24. But open primaries, which Sanders is promoting, allow non-Democrats to participate in choosing...

....the Democratic candidate. Make sense?

[reddread]

34. more sense than listening to conservative Canadians about liberal American issues

[George II]

40. Who are you referring to?

[oberliner]

15. Understood

Last edited Tue May 24, 2016, 08:49 AM - Edit history (1)

I am just saying that if such a rule were in place during this election cycle then Hillary would be the nominee.

Bernie, in fact, has been focussing on getting the Super D's to cross over to his side in large enough numbers to overcome the pledged delegate gap.

This is, in fact, the only way that he can win the nomination.

[Equinox Moon]

17. Understood

and yes, we have two aspects to the SuperD issue.
1) Abolishing them for the future and having an actual democratic primary process.
2) That in this current Primary the SuperD's would actually represent how the State(s) voted.

[oberliner]

18. Regarding #2

If the Super D's actually represent how the states voted, it would still mean that Clinton would win, since she has a higher number of pledged delegates.

The way that Bernie can win would be if the Super D's go against the will of the majority and choose Bernie over Hillary even though Hillary will have more pledged delegates.

Bernie currently seems to be making a case for this to happen, as he emphasizes that he is more likely to beat trump than Hillary.

It seems antithetical to the principle of the Super D's reflecting the will of the people, though, if they decide to go against the pledged delegate winner for the reason Bernie's campaign is suggesting (i.e. that he can beat Trump and she can't).

[George II]

25. If 2) happened, Clinton would STILL get more superdelegates than Sanders.

[LiberalFighter]

30. You are absolutely right.

Clinton would have 384 to Sanders 173 if it was winner take all for automatic delegates.

[George II]

31. And it would be something like 310-250 if they were proportional. No matter which of the several...

...superdelegate schemes the Sanders campaign have come up with, Clinton still gets the majority of superdelegates.

[karynnj]

36. I regret that Bernie's team did not clearly say - that the winner of the majority of the pledged

counts should be the nominee.

There never was any possibility of the superdelegates choosing a loser of the pledged delegates over HRC - not in 2016 or 2008. That is why Obama's superdelegates - notably John Kerry - quickly said that the superdelegates were not likely to over turn the will of the voters as expressed in superdelegates. The reason he could take this position is that the HRC people were pushing the idea that if they felt someone who narrowly lost, but won the "popular vote" which really does not exist in the nomination race, could win with more than half the superdelegates. NO ONE suggested that this would be done for Obama.

It is even less likely with Bernie - so the argument I suggested would allow them to take the high ground with no real down side.

[oberliner]

39. Agreed

That would have been a strong, principled stand to take.

[lostnfound]

29. That's fine, if she wins it honestly

A lot of us would be certainly be inc to vote in the GE for her if she wins honestly.

[MineralMan]

21. Vermont has zero to say about Super Delegates.

They is a national party thing. Vermont can express its opinion, but that's all. In any case, nothing will change for this year's election. The 2020 election is the first time any changes in how the super delegates figure into the nomination can happen.

Vermont's super delegates will still vote based on their own decisions.

[cali]

22. The point is obvious. If enough states do the same

Superdelegates are gone.

[MineralMan]

26. Of course. Will that happen? I have no idea.

The thing is that some people seem to think that Vermont can force its super delegates to vote in a certain way this year. That's patently untrue, but is not being mentioned in most of the posts about it.

The whole unpledged delegate thing is up to the national party, not any individual state. Will enough states and their DNC members decide to dump unpledged delegates in 2020? Good question. I think not, actually.

Those super delegates could be very useful in a primary race with more than two viable candidates. So far, such a situation has not occurred since unpledged delegates were added to the mix. It could, though.

A more important question, really, is whether open primaries will still be part of the next primary in 2020. Caucuses will also be under consideration in the decision-making for 2020. Minnesota's dumping its caucuses. Will that be a trend?

I don't care about 2020 yet. We still have a nominee to elect for 2016. The rest is way down the road, as far as I'm concerned.

Vermont has a very small delegation and any national convention. It has an equally small influence on national party decisions. And there it is, really, in a nutshell.

[LiberalFighter]

32. I'm sure there will be a discussion about unpledged delegates at the DNC

But there will also be a history lesson given to all of the members as to how it all came about. That should also include how both pledged and unpledged delegates are determined. Based on all of the components used to determine it all imo it should remain the same. The only modification that I could see as a possibility would be to reduce delegates for states using caucuses or open primaries.

[karynnj]

37. This woman blogger was completely misinformed - here is the VT Digger article

https://vtdigger.org/2016/05/22/states-democratic-convention-is-almost-all-bernie-all-the-time/

I went to the convention and the resolution had nothing to do with 2016. The resolution, which passed unanimously, was for 2020 and obviously was intended for the VT DNC representatives to advocate for this.

[MineralMan]

38. A lot of people don't bother to read or don't care.

It's a shame when material written by such people gets posted here without question. Fortunately, there are DUers who do read and who will correct things.

I suppose it's sometimes just misunderstanding the facts, but it's also sometimes deliberate.

[onecaliberal]

27. Great news. Third state to do so.

[karynnj]

33. I went to the state convention and she is misstating the resolution - it deals with future elections

not stripping the current superdelegates of their votes. Needless to say, it is a resolution that the VT delegates push the national DNC to eliminate super delegates. Obviously, there are many vested interests in the DNC that will completely reject this, so they also included rules that changed things within the VT delegation.

Here is the Vermont Digger article on what really happened -

Besides electing national delegates, the convention voters unanimously passed a resolution calling for national party rule changes that would force superdelegates to follow the will of the primary voters in future elections.

Should the national party not adopt Vermont’s proposed rule, the Vermont Democratic Party pledged to amend its own rules in 2020, promising to allocate their own delegates so as to attempt to match the primary results.

A separate resolution also unanimously passed, making official the delegation’s endorsement of Sanders for president.

https://vtdigger.org/2016/05/22/states-democratic-convention-is-almost-all-bernie-all-the-time/

It was a cool experience and the 3 candidates for Governor and 3 candidates for Lt governor all addressed the audience. Bill McKibben was a great speaker. He was an early supporter of Bernie's and a top advocate on climate change. He had an interesting comment on Bernie's national appeal:

“We did not know whether he was going to turn out to be Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream, that everyone could understand and appreciate, or whether he was going to be a maple creemee — you know, beloved at home but unknown beyond the border,” said environmentalist Bill McKibben, a vocal supporter and early surrogate of Sanders.

For those interested, no one attacked HRC in any speech -- and all 100 plus people running to be voted to get 11 of the pledged delegate slots in Philadelphia gave 30 second speeches. Most of those running for office spoke of Bernie having brought Vermont values to the country.