What’s so super about a “SuperDeligate”?
I’m not a Democrat anymore…..changed to independent some years ago.
A SuperDeligate is a delegate nominated by the DNC to vote. I don’t believe they are told how to vote, but it’s their job to balance the sometime idiocy of the American people.
Yes – as much as we like to thing we’re perfect, we’re sometimes idiots. Hey – we as a people elected George W. Bush not once, but TWICE in rapid succession.
Personally I’m ok with whichever one gets nominated, I like the idea of either of them as president, though I think that Hillary needs to back off and continue to fight clean, (if she’s willing to smear Barak Obama to become president, she doesn’t deserve to be president.)
That being said, I think that as much as I believe Clinton would make a great president (Bill-II) I think Obama, rather than Clinton, has the ability to beat McCain, and *THAT* is why I feel like the superdeligates come in handy. Maybe the majority of democrats want Clinton, but if Clinton is nominated by “the people” it will only serve to energize the republican party and unite them behind John McCain.
The DNC has the party’s best interests in mind, and if that means that the superdeligates will turn the election to Obama regardless of Clinton winning the vote, they should do that.
The reason they are there, and in the specific number is a good one. A candidate that wins the primary with an overwhelming majority can’t be turned by the superdeligates, but when it’s close, sometimes it’s up to some to put more thought into the issue than most voters do.
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From: <REMOVED>
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 2:28 PM
To: <REMOVED>
Subject: DNC Petition
Pass this on as you see fit.
There is an online petition asking the DNC to choose the candidate with the most votes and delegates rather than take the chance that Washington Insiders will override the will of the voters with a secret “backroom deal”.
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Truthfully it’s not a fixed way. Parties here select their candidates based on a very arbitrary set of rules.
What people don’t seem to get is that there is no ‘constitutional right’ to vote in a primary election. The party picks who the party will put forth and each party has it’s own set of rules.
Personally I dislike the “superdeligate” method, it means that the party ‘elders’ and other party powerful can overrule the will of the people.
However, the reason for them doing that is a good one. The primary process is corruptable. We saw it this year in republicans voting in the democratic races (where they were allowed) to skew the results. The superdeligates were designed to balance that.
As an example – there were a number of races that Hillary Clinton won by a wide margin that may well have been influenced by a certain American idiot named Rush Limbaugh. He told his loyal sheep to go out and vote for Clinton to help keep the Democratic primary going on as long as possible, hoping that it would damage the party and let their fairly weak candidate take the white-house in 2008.
It may have worked, it may not, because we’ll never really be able to find out how many supposed republicans voted in those contests.
I’m a firm bleiever that if you are voting in a presidental primary for a certain party, that you should be required to have been registered as a member of that party for a period of 12 months prior. This would all-but eliminate that kind of manipulation and make for a real contest that showed the actual will of the party.
The american system sucks in the grand scheme of things. I prefer the British form of parliamentary democracy. Congress should, on a vote, have the power to fire the president, and the president should, once per term, have the power to dissolve congress as of the end of the session and force elections.
It would keep everyone honest, which is exactly the opposite of what we have here.
I’m confused! Not in general, but about the way the Democratic presidential candidate is chosen.
I have been living in the USA for 6 months, having moved from the United kingdom to be with my husband. The democratic bickering and battling began not long after I arrived and i have never seen anything like it in an election race before.
I heard someone talking on TV about the fact that it’s deligate numbers not the popular vote which determines the candidate. To me, this does not add up – how does the preference of a few thousand chosen people take precedent over millions of voting Americans? If 10,000,000 will vote for candidate A and 5,000,000 for candidate B, what difference does the preference of 4000 chosen deligates make? Basic math really – the candidate should be who the public will vote for and want to run, that’s democracy!
Maybe I’m missing something so please enlightn me!