Latest Breaking News
In reply to the discussion: Democrats delay change to convention superdelegates [View all]KitSileya
(4,035 posts)If they had gotten rid of superdelegates, Bernie would have had to concede in March, April at the latest. He wouldn't have been able to refuse to concede until nearly the Convention, because it would have been much clearer that he didn't have a mathematical way forward. That would have been preferable for the local races, since a lot of the donations that Hillary raised couldn't be released until we had a nominee, and we didn't have that until Bernie conceded. That lost us several months of strongly financing local campaigns.
As it was, the superdelegates could have changed the race if they had gone against the will of the voters, and voted for the candidate with less pledged delegates (not that they have ever done that, in fact, they have done the opposite and switched when Obama got more pledged delegates than Hillary in 2008).
Personally I think super-delegates are a good idea. Long-time members of the party, former elected representatives or people who have held important offices in the party do have a steadier view of who can be elected. They are also not occupying slots as pledged delegates, so that newer, more recently engaged party members have a better chance of participating in the process.