Dear Dr. Democrat:
Did we always have super delegates? I don’t remember ever hearing the term before this year.
Unsure About Supers
Dear Unsure:
The super delegates were added after the McGovern nomination in order to prevent the party from ever again nominating high-minded, wine-sipping, arugula-munching intellectual elites who don’t stand a chance in the general election. Obviously, it has been an abysmal failure.
But seriously, the purpose of the super delegate system is to stop a too-liberal, unelectable candidate in a close election from getting the nomination at the convention. The idea was that if it should ever come to pass again that the hoi poloi gave the popular vote to an unelectable effete, the super delegates, who are mostly current or former elected officials, would step in and save the day by choosing a more palatable (i.e., conservative) candidate.
It’s popular to cast Clinton as being evil because she might play this card, but the card was put there to be played. That being said, I don’t think she’ll do it — and if she tries, I don’t think the supers will go for it. Feinstein and even Schumer have signaled they won’t vote for her.
But, as the saying goes, the rules are the rules.
Dr. D
