Are the Caucuses and the Convention Broken?

[CaptJasHook]

Rhetorical question, I know. However, is the spirit of democracy being broken?

A brief History:

The first Congressional Caucus was held in 1796 after George Washington stepped down from office. Congressional members of each party selected who was to be there Presidential candidate. This practice was abandoned at the Federal level in 1824 because it was seen as undemocratic, in fact, it became known as the “King Caucus.”

In 1831, the practice switched to party conventions. The convention system was virtually the same as the Congressional Caucus system. The main difference was now decisions were made by an expanded field dubbed “The Party leadership” (who may or may not include only Congressional members). This system created the great Party Bosses and political machines that controlled the delegates through back room deals, heated negotiations, and cheating.

Out of disgust for this system, Western Progressives (Ah, my fellow Western Progressives!!) of the late 19th century began to hold primaries that transparently assigned delegates according to voters. However these primaries were few and far between.

That all changed in 1968, after Hubert Humphrey was chosen as the candidate at the riotous and infamous Democratic convention in Chicago. Even though the anti-war candidate Gene McCarthy had crushed Humphrey in the few primaries that were held and had massive support, Humphrey walked away with the nomination.

The result of this debacle was the creation of the McGovern – Fraser Commission. The commission established transparent procedures for nomination and affirmative action guidelines. The easiest way of complying with these guidelines was for many states to adopt primaries and do away with the caucus system.

The commission also established three procedures that I find to be pertinent in our current situation. First that all delegate selection is required to be transparent. Second that party leaders could no longer pick delegates. And, finally, that delegates would be assigned to states proportionally according to population.


As I see it, the current system of super delegates is in violation of both the spirit of the McGovern – Fraser Commission and the 1824 rejection of the “King Caucus”. By allowing these Super Delegates to have such a weighty influence, essentially reversing the popular vote, are we not still having our candidates chosen by arm-twisting, back room deals and in-party politics? Doesn’t this set the stage for future corruption and voter disenfranchisement? Isn’t this undemocratic and significantly un Progressive?


Finally, the procedures of selecting MOST of the Super delegates are transparent to the candidates running for the nomination (or at least members of their staff) and can be made clearer by a quick web search:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdelegate#_note-NYT
has an excellent post, and you can find the actual super delegates here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Democratic_Party_Superdelegates
(Yes, Bill has a vote)

I believe I can say that the average voter… the majority of voters are unaware of this system. I am very happy that we are in a situation that is educating us on the fly as to how our nomination system works. However, I feel really depressed that I am only now, after 20+ years of voting am finding out how all of this works and I know there are others out there who feel the same.

Next time I am going to be more involved and pay attention to who is leading my party at the state level, even the low level officials that nobody seems to know anything about.

[Hippo_Tron]

1. You might want to edit to state that Gene McCarthy ran against Humphrey in '68 not George McGovern

[CaptJasHook]

2. I was ahead of myself

Thinking about the Commission report.

Thanks