They may not go away completely but won't have the power they used to if this comes to pass.
A commission of Democratic leaders on Wednesday recommended their party virtually eliminate superdelegates from their presidential candidate nomination process.
Their proposal -- commissioned by the Democratic National Committee in the aftermath of last year's tough primary season -- would essentially make the "superdelegate" post an honorary position.
Consequently, these powerful party leaders could no longer select the candidate of their choice; rather, their votes would be tied to the outcome of their respective states' primaries, which choose winners by popular vote. - The Hill
You can read more of our Superdelegate coverage here.
The Commission approved a draft report that recommends converting most automatic unpledged “superdelegates” to pledged delegates who will fill slots reflecting the voter preferences in their state’s primary or caucuses – thus becoming automatic, pledged, voting convention delegates. The DNC Rules and Bylaws Commission (RBC) will consider the Commission’s report and then forward proposed delegate selection rules to the DNC for action later in 2010.
Superdelegates: The draft report proposes a new category of National Party Leader and Elected Officials (NPLEO) delegates who will serve as full voting delegates to the national convention. The current proposal thus backs off from the prior proposal which would have made superdelegates non-voting delegates. The current add-on unpledged delegate positions that were filled at state conventions would be eliminated. Each state would receive a number of additional delegates (NPLEOs) that is equal to the number of its current automatic delegates – including all DNC members (elected, at large, state party chairs and vice chairs, and DNC officers), members of Congress, Governors, and Distinguished Former Party Leaders. After the state has held its primary or caucus process and determined the percentage of delegates to be allocated to each presidential candidate, the NPLEOs, like the current At Large and PLEO delegates, would be allocated to those candidates. Each NPLEO then woukld have the choice of pledging to a candidate or not pledging to any candidate and participating in the convention as a nonvoting delegate.
The Democratic Change Commission held their final open meeting in Washington this weekend. Here's a summary of what happened:
Meeting in DC, the Dem Change Commission put finishing touches on a report it will make to another party committee recommending changes to the timeline, the caucus process and the influence of unpledged delegates. ... But disagreement over unpledged delegates remain after '08, when the nominating process between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton focused largely on those super-delegates. Dem members of Congress, governors and DNC members are given automatic votes at national conventions, making up nearly 20% of voting delegates -- enough to have given either Clinton or Obama a winning majority after pledged delegates were allocated.
The commission needs to "make sure the American people understand that their vote counts," said Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager in '00. Proponents of reducing super-delegate influence say elected delegates should have all the power, while opponents say elected party officials should keep control over part of the process.
The Change Commission's draft report suggests reducing the influence of unpledged super-delegates but does not offer specific proposals.
But actually there was discussion of specific proposals. DCC member Suzi Levine lists them:
Convert all unpledged delegates to non-voting delegates who get presence at the convention, but no vote. AND – expand # PLEO (party leader and elected official) delegates so that, should they want, those officials and DNC members can run in that category for delegate) (NOTE: This is what I and many others, including Chairman Clyburn, support)
Maintain voting status of unpledged delegates, but substantially reduce % across the different groups (elected officials, dnc members, etc…)
Maintain status quo in numbers and convert elected officials to non-voting delegates, but convert the DNC members to become pledged delegates allocated on a % basis and required to vote for their designated candidate.
Option 2 is what we assumed would happen, but it's very interesting that option 1, getting rid of the superdelegates completely (for voting purposes), is gaining traction. Option 3 is a problem as it requires delegates to vote for a specific candidate regardless of how they actually feel.
Brazile, who is not on the Change Commission but is a member of the RBC, previewed one potential compromise by suggesting the number of elected delegates pledged to future presidential candidates be increased, so that the percentage of total delegates who are unelected is reduced.
That's always been the Democratic Party's solution to all things delegate related in the past. Increase the number of delegates. That's why they have almost twice the number of delegates the GOP has. And any school kid could tell you you would have to more than double the number of regular delegates to half the influence of the superdelegates.
And it's not as if superdelegates will necessarily want to give up their privileged status. But Democrats are lucky that they're sorting all this out in a year with very little pressure on them, as President Obama is expected to seek the presidency again in 2012 with no Democratic challengers on the horizon. Trying to iron this out with top Democrats jockeying for prominence might not be as easy.
But that won't stop pundits from commenting on whether the changes will hurt or help Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Interesting interview with Obama's campaign Manager David Plouffe...
PR.com: Tell me a little bit about the Superdelegate situation. During the campaign a lot of people were confused by it because it almost seemed like two separate races.
David Plouffe: This has never really factored into an election, because Kerry and Gore, they won pretty early. There’s elected officials and party leaders that are given a vote. They’re a delegate in our process. What was apparent was even when we opened up a meaningful lead over Clinton, and delegates are rewarded as a result of elections, neither one of us was going to be at the magic number. So you did need some number of delegates and superdelegates to push you over. Superdelegates are not awarded based on elections. You’ve got to go to them individually and ask them for their support. It was a very frustrating part of the campaign, just because we thought that the voters should make this decision. Those weren’t our rules so we had to live by them.
PR.com: Did you feel as though Clinton was trying to pull rank with superdelegates and kind of override what was really going on, as far as how people were voting?
David Plouffe: Not pull rank so much as that was clearly her avenue [to win]. What was interesting was that while the election became much more focused on the superdelegates we were still winning the superdelegate battle day after day in February, March and April pretty convincingly. They were trying to convince the superdelegates with the elect-ability argument. [Clinton] would say, “I’m more elect-able because I can put up with the Republican attacks, and I’ll do really well in Pennsylvania and Michigan.” And we said, “Well, we’re going to do fine in Pennsylvania and Michigan too, but we can put new states in play like North Carolina and Virginia.” So that was kind of the subterranean battle that was going on with the superdelegates. - PR.com
If you weren't with us during the primaries you can see all the fun we had with superdelegates here.
Stay tuned to DCW to see how superdelegates and the nominating process change.
As we noted, the DNC's Democratic Change Commission met yesterday to discuss a number of potential changes to the election process, including primary calendar, caucuses, and the role of superdelegates. In the morning, DNC Chair Don Fowler made a proposal to reduce the number of superdelegates from 850 or so to approximately 300.
In the afternoon session, four options were proposed, and then three additional options were discussed:
Option 1: eliminate unpledged delegates into non-voting delegates – honored delegation members Option 2: 40-50% reduction:
1. No add-ons 2. Reduce # of dnc members & congressional members
Option 3: increase PLEOs to accommodate a portion of the DNC members & members of congress – Option 4: unpledged turned into pledged delegates. Rules and Bylaws Commission. would determine how they would be pledged (the Mondale) Option 5: DNC leadership only, Party chairs, Govs. & Senators, Distinguished party leaders, Expand PLEOs Convert remaining congresspeople and DNC members into “honored guests” Option 6: Eliminate superdelegates, greatly expand PLEOs, any supers not selected as PLEOs become special non-voting delegates Option 7: Keep them, but give each superdelegate 1/2 vote.
(As a reminder from last year, the 81 add-on superdelegates were unpledged delegates chosen late in the process to reward people or constituencies that were missed in the process. Originally requested by Jesse Jackson supporters in the late 1980's, these are probably the easiest to eliminate. PLEO - party leaders and elected officials - are pledged delegates, picked in the same proportion as regular delegates determined by the voters).
Looking at the options, we really see that Options 2, 3 and 5 are similar. Reduce the number of superdelegates by half to 2/3rds, and make the former superdelegates either pledged delegates or honored guests of some sort. Options 1, 4 and 6 get rid of superdelegates completely, converting them into pledged delegates or honored guests.
It actually seems pretty obvious what they will do. They won't get rid of superdelegates completely, as they serve a purpose - encouraging party leaders (Governors, leaders in Congress) to come to the convention, something they often didn't do during the 1970's. The add-on's are low-hanging fruit - they'll be gone. Then we've got the many House members, and the many DNC members. Will DNC members vote to remove their own delegate status? That's the biggest open question.
One other thing that was discussed: a recommendation that superdelegates don't announce their support for a candidate before some point in time - maybe when their state votes, makes sense. It can't really be enforced - in the extreme case, Obama and Clinton were both superdelegates - but a strong recommendation from the DNC would provide cover for any superdelegate to say - sorry, Senator, I can't commit to endorsing you right now due to DNC guidelines.
Much of this post was based on detailed blog posts by meeting attendees Suzi Levine and Frank Leone.
Josh will have more upcoming on the primary schedule discussions.
*** Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’: Missing those daily superdelegate counts? The speculation about when states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan would hold their primaries/caucuses? Come on, admit it -- you miss it. Well, if you are, you can head over Saturday morning to the first meeting of the DNC’s Democratic Change Commission, which has been tasked with reforming 1) the primary calendar, 2) the number of superdelegates, and 3) the caucus system. Presiding over the meeting will be DNC chair Tim Kaine and commission co-chairs Jim Clyburn and Claire McCaskill, and there isn’t supposed to be any big news. The 37-member commission will listen to a presentation of Democratic Party presidential nominations by Rhodes Cook; a look at the superdelegates by Elaine Kamarck; and an examination of the caucus system by Organizing for America’s Mitch Stewart. This is all in the fact-gathering stage, but ask yourself this: How likely is it that this DNC would dramatically change a system that helped launch the president's campaign? Iowa and South Carolina are VERY safe. As for the superdelegate system, well that’s another story…
As I said earlier in the week, no decisions are going to be made tomorrow, but it is quite another thing to see how much listening the group will be doing tomorrow. That probably isn't the kind of action most people want. My hope? That the DNC posts the presentations as part of their coverage.
Yesterday, HuffPost had an article on superdelegates. There are a few things they didn't mention.
There's a backstory to how DCW came to be, and how it came to be "THE" source for superdelegates. I'll leave that to history, because eventually there will be a lot of books on the intricacies of the 2008 election.
What history will say is that there were these two guys who, first, KNEW that the superdelegate race would matter. Not everyone did (most famously, Mark Penn.) They then committed to tracking not the NUMBER of superdelegates, but the number by NAME. They developed colour-coded lists, and when they said that person A stood with candidate B, they had proof. (No matter how many times the delegate may have changed his or her mind.) DCW was the only place with names. Everyone has guestimates, DCW had actual facts.
The list work itself was technically painful, as well as painstaking, owing to the issues with working with tables in Blogger. Plus, the lists needed daily hourly work and updates. It took a lot of time. And while, yes, Matt and Oreo are political junkies, they also both have actual lives. (Honest: jobs, families, and theoretically a need for sleep.)
In addition to the superdelegates, there was the research they did on the convention itself. And, believe it or not, Matt originally created this site as a place for anything and everything about the convention itself: site selection to execution, with no detail spared. This was the first place to publish that the acceptance speech would be at the stadium. It was written as a rumour, but Oreo had actual confirmation.
I joined Matt and Oreo last June to help with the convention posts. As I told them then, I stand in awe of the work that they did: then, now, and always. They showed a commitment to truth and transparency, their work was meticulous, honest, and devoid of any personal leanings. At a time when the superdelegate race mattered, for the only time in history, and the mainstream press fell down on the job, Matt and Oreo spent hours on hours on data collection, write-ups and tracking. No one else did what they did.
In May of 2008, a piece came out with video of the NBC room where they kept their superdelegate lists, in hand-writing, on big pieces of paper, on the walls. I had the opportunity to ask Chuck Todd why NBC didn't use spreadsheets, like DCW did. He assured me that Tim Russert insisted they have spreadsheets. And that they really did. I asked him why they didn't publish the actual names, and he mumbled something about that not being the way they decided to go. It was understood implicitly that for the MSM "relationships with sources" trumped the public's right to know.
Matt and Oreo did it right.
Per the numbers, millions of people viewed the work that they did. We, the political junkies, have always appreciated it. My guess is that history will, too. Because of Matt and Oreo, we all knew what we would not have known otherwise.
I know I speak for millions when I say: thanks, guys. It would have been a whole other primary season without you.
Update from Matt: Kudos to Oreo, who first came up with the idea of publishing the list, based on an early list of congressional endorsements from, I think, Roll Call. It first went up just around the Iowa caucuses, and honestly, at the time, we had no idea superdelegates would matter. Good thing we were wrong!
