But knowing the superdelegates have the party’s back isn’t much comfort. Democratic senators and members of Congress, superdelegates all, have done little but disappoint since taking control of the House and Senate last November. And the idea that superdelegates help ensure the party chooses electable candidates is shaky. Since the superdelegate system was created nearly thirty years ago, only one Democrat, Hillary’s husband, has made it to the White House, though it’s arguable that John Kerry and Al Gore didn’t lose their elections, but were victims of political foul play.
The last time Democratic Party insiders determined the nomination was in 1968. These insiders weren’t superdelegates — such a thing didn’t exist then — but they were party bigwigs, most of whom, incidentally, would be superdelegates today, if they were still in politics.
Here’s what happened in 1968: Bobby Kennedy was killed on the campaign trail, so the contest came down to two men. Eugene McCarthy, an anti-war political outsider, was the logical and ideological heir to Kennedy, but Hubert Humphrey was Lyndon Johnson’s veep — the establishment candidate. Though Humphrey didn’t win a single primary, the party bosses chose him as the Democratic candidate.
But even before that, outraged citizens had taken to the streets, protesting a system that would allow someone other than the people’s clear choice to even have a shot at the nomination. The establishment ruled the streets, too, though — police met protestors with clubs and tear gas. Veteran journalist Floyd J. McKay, who covered the convention in 1968, described the scene as “demonstrations verging on anarchy [and] police violence verging on sadism,” in a 2004 Seattle Times column.
The ruckus didn’t keep Humphrey from going on to the general election, where he lost to Republican Richard Nixon, but it did prompt an overhaul of the party’s nomination rules, taking power out of the hands of party heavies and placing it in the hands of grass-roots Democrats.
That reform led to the nominations of two outsiders, George McGovern and Jimmy Carter, in 1972 and 1976, respectively. But McGovern was trounced in the 1972 contest against the incumbent Nixon, winning only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Carter fared better, winning the election in 1976, but was humiliated by Ronald Reagan, who won by a landslide in 1980.
So the establishment struck back. “There was a feeling that the reforms had gone too far,” says Anthony Corrado, professor of government at Colby College. The rules were rewritten, again, in 1980 to put more power back into the hands of party leaders by naming them “superdelegates.” Under the new rules, 80 percent of voters at the Democratic National Convention would be pledged delegates who cast votes based on their states’ primary and caucus results. The remainder would be cast by superdelegates.
The Response
Given the decisive role superdelegates will play in this year’s election, a chorus of people has emerged, urging the superdelegates to use their superpowers for good.
In the past few weeks, a flurry of petitions has arisen from both established groups, like MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, and new ones, like Brooklyn-based Respect Our Vote, that have sprung up specifically in response to the superdelegate situation. These petitions urge superdelegates to wait until all Democrats have voted, then add their votes to whichever candidate has the most votes.
