There are two excellent Democratic candidates for President this year, each with their own strengths and natural bases within the party. This is resulting in an extremely close race for the nomination. Exactly how this race will resolve itself is as yet unclear, even though there is already a presumptive Republican nominee.
That is not what this post is about.
This post is about four clear problems with the Democratic nominating process. If these problems did not exist, would either Clinton or Obama have become a presumptive nominee by now? I don't know, and, if one of them would have, I don't know which one it would have been.
But, in my opinion, these problems need to be fixed. Unfortunately, only one of these problems can be fixed immediately, and it should be. The others should be addressed before the 2012 election starts to gear up, officially, on February 1, 2009. Just kidding. The 2012 election won't officially start to gear up until January 1, 2010.
The problems:
1. The night of every primary or caucus, we repeatedly hear some variant of this statement: Because of complicated Democratic rules covering awarding of delegates, we won’t know tonight how the delegates will be awarded, or even which candidate will end up with the most delegates.
This is both wrong, and, frankly, dumb.
Who would come up with such a system, and why?
What is the point in having a system that is so complicated, we don’t know the results even after we know the results?
What is the point in having a system that, on a state-by-state basis, may or may not reward the candidate who lost?
The Republicans don't have these problems. Why should the Democrats? The system of awarding delegates needs to be simplified, and changed to ensure that the winner of a primary or caucus ends up with the most delegates.
2. Even after they figure out all the delegates elected in all the primaries and caucuses, the Democrats still might not have a nominee. Why? SUPERDELEGATES.
I’m sure these delegates are really good, but are they really SUPER?
I’ve heard a lot of reasons why the Democrats have SUPERDELEGATES. To the best of my recollection, SUPERDELEGATES were instituted after the 1972 primaries nominated George McGovern, who got destroyed by Nixon. The thinking was that, if you had a bunch of politico delegates who were not elected in primaries, they would stop the people from making such foolish choices.
IMO, it didn’t work in 1988. This year SUPERDELEGATES are just downright dangerous. They may end up nominating someone other than the person who wins the primaries and the caucuses.
Whatever the reason behind them, SUPERDELEGATES are undemocratic, with a small “d”.
Do away with THEM.
3. Maybe we need primaries in some states, and caucuses in other. Greater minds than mine can decide. But a caucus AND a primary in the SAME state, on the SAME day? And you get to vote in BOTH of them? Plus, you got your SUPERDELEGATES?
What’s that all about, Texas?
4. The Democratic party doesn’t have any procedure for Florida and Michigan to select delegates. How many people think this is a good thing? OK, now, how many members of the Democratic Party think this is a good thing?
That’s what I thought.
It’s not like we’re talking about, say, North and South Dakota, here. These are not small states that the Democrats have no chance of winning in the general election.
In fact, these are huge states that the Democrats may well HAVE to win in the general election if the Democrats want to elect a President.
What’s more important: working out the details for 20 debates, or figuring out how two critical states are going to express themselves in the selecting the party’s nominee? Or do we intend to disenfranchise all Democrats in two huge states because the states tried to vote earlier than someone thought they should?
Get Howard Dean in a room with representatives for Clinton and Obama, and the Florida and Michigan Democratic parties, and a whole bunch of attorneys, and get this thing solved.
NOW.
Please.