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In reply to the discussion: Democrats delay change to convention superdelegates [View all]George II
(67,782 posts)Tad Devine, a longtime Democratic operative and top strategist for 2016 Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders, told the Guardian: After the 1980 convention when there was so few party leaders and elected officials on the floor of the convention, the party made a decision about looking at its rules and reassessing the primary process.
This reassessment happened through the Hunt commission, an internal party panel chaired by the North Carolina governor, Jim Hunt.
Devine, who played a key role on the commission, said that initially the creation of superdelegates was limited in scope. While the commission made the decision to create a category of delegates who would win that position based not on voter participation but status in the party, even these delegates were elected.
The House Democratic conference and the Senate Democratic caucus would each meet and elect three-fifths of their members to be delegates to the convention. In addition, the chair and vice-chair of each state Democratic party would become superdelegates as well.
After 1984, the number of superdelegates continued to increase. All Democratic congressmen and senators received an automatic vote at the convention, as did all DNC members. There was a brief attempt to reform this in 1988 when, as a result of convention-eve negotiations between Devine, then representing the campaign of presumptive nominee Michael Dukakis, and Ron Brown, representing liberal insurgent Jesse Jackson, a deal was made to limit the number of the DNC members who could serve as superdelegates.
Instead of every member of that committee, superdelegate status would once again be limited to party chairs and vice-chairs. That was immediately reversed after the election when Brown successfully ran to be DNC chair. As Devine noted, Brown was a very astute politician and decided to run on a platform of restoring status of DNC members as superdelegates. In an electorate composed entirely of DNC members, this was a very successful message.
...lots more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/19/democratic-party-superdelegates-history-rules-changes