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Whither Democracy? The Democratic Party’s Dilemma in 2008

by MLeach


Sen­a­tors Hillary Clin­ton and Barack Obama

The 2008 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign has high­lighted a num­ber of ques­tion­able and prob­lem­atic prac­tices of the Demo­c­ra­tic Party. Indeed, the nom­i­na­tion process, it seems, has become as impor­tant as the can­di­dates them­selves and many com­men­ta­tors are begin­ning to ques­tion such things as the use of superdel­e­gates in the nom­i­nat­ing process, the use of cau­cuses to select del­e­gates to the national con­ven­tion, and the recent deci­sion by the Demo­c­ra­tic National Com­mit­tee (DNC) to pun­ish the state par­ties of Florida and Michi­gan for re-scheduling their pri­mary dates with­out permission.

Although these issues are cen­tral to any dis­cus­sion of the cur­rent demo­c­ra­tic elec­tion cam­paigns, many aver­age vot­ers still do not have a clue what much of this means, so before pro­ceed­ing any fur­ther let’s review some basics. First of all, what or who are superdel­e­gates? Also known offi­cially as unpledged del­e­gates, superdel­e­gates are offi­cers in the Demo­c­ra­tic Party who also have a vote at the national party con­ven­tion. Superdel­e­gates are gen­er­ally for­mer or cur­rent office-holders although some are mem­bers of the DNC. They hold their sta­tus by virtue of being lead­ers of the party and as such are not selected at state party conventions.

There are cur­rently roughly 795 superdel­e­gates in the Demo­c­ra­tic Party. This num­ber is not fixed and is sub­ject to change for var­i­ous rea­sons. For instance, Joseph Lieber­man, a for­mer Demo­c­ra­tic, now Inde­pen­dent, Sen­a­tor from Con­necti­cut, was stripped of his superdel­e­gate sta­tus early in the cur­rent cam­paign cycle; for­mer New York gov­er­nor Eliot Spitzer, who recently resigned in the midst of a scan­dal, was another offi­cial who lost his superdel­e­gate sta­tus1.

Superdel­e­gates gen­er­ally fall into one of the fol­low­ing six cat­e­gories of party and gov­ern­ment offi­cials: 1) elected mem­bers of the DNC (about 450 mem­bers); 2) gov­er­nors (50 mem­bers); 3) US Sen­a­tors and Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (this includes non-voting del­e­gates from the US Vir­gin Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia); 4) dis­tin­guished party lead­ers (such as cur­rent and for­mer Pres­i­dents and Vice Pres­i­dents); 5) for­mer lead­ers of the Sen­ate and House; and 6) for­mer DNC chair­men and unpledged del­e­gates cho­sen by the DNC.

Superdel­e­gates date back only to the 1984 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. They were insti­tuted fol­low­ing the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Hunt Com­mis­sion, so named after Jim Hunt, a for­mer gov­er­nor of North Car­olina, in response to a cou­ple of nom­i­nat­ing con­tro­ver­sies. The first was that of George McGov­ern who, despite win­ning only one state and less than 40% of the pop­u­lar vote, still man­aged to secure the Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­na­tion for pres­i­dent. McGov­ern then promptly lost the 1972 gen­eral elec­tion to Richard Nixon. This was fol­lowed up in 1976 with the nom­i­na­tion of Jimmy Carter over some more well-known politi­cians (such as Mass­a­chu­setts Sen­a­tor Edward Kennedy). As a result, the superdel­e­gates were intro­duced so as to give the party lead­er­ship and polit­i­cal cognoscenti, more of a say in the nom­i­nat­ing process.

Since superdel­e­gates have recently come under attack as unrep­re­sen­ta­tive and poten­tially a threat to the pop­u­lar will, why is the Demo­c­ra­tic Party using them? Tad Devine, a polit­i­cal con­sul­tant for the Gore 2000 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, who helped intro­duce the super-delegate sys­tem, said in a recent inter­view to Jacob Sobo­roff of WhyTuesday.org, that they exist to pro­vide: a) an inde­pen­dent source of judg­ment; b) a back­stop – in case an unfore­seen scan­dal emerges dur­ing a polit­i­cal cam­paign; or c) clo­sure in a closely con­tested cam­paign. Most superdel­e­gates tend to decide after most of the vot­ing has occurred (typ­i­cally only 20% decide early in an elec­tion cycle). Accord­ing to Devine, the sys­tem is not intended to be entirely demo­c­ra­tic and hav­ing superdel­e­gates does not under­mine democ­racy (they’re only 20% of the nom­i­nat­ing process). From his per­spec­tive it is all part of the checks and bal­ances in the rep­re­sen­ta­tive, par­tic­i­pa­tory polit­i­cal system.

The can­di­dates’ views on the sub­ject are also per­ti­nent with Sen­a­tor Barak Obama diverg­ing more from Devine’s view than Sen­a­tor Hillary Clin­ton. Accord­ing to ABC News Sen­a­tor Obama said:

“My strong belief is that if we end up with the most states and the most pledged del­e­gates from the most vot­ers in the coun­try, that it would be prob­lem­atic for the polit­i­cal insid­ers to over­turn the judg­ment of the voters.”

In Clinton’s view:

“Superdel­e­gates are by design sup­posed to exer­cise inde­pen­dent judg­ment, that is the way the sys­tem works,” she told reporters after a town hall in Orono, Maine. “If Sen­a­tor Obama and his cam­paign con­tinue to push this posi­tion which is really con­trary to what the def­i­n­i­tion of a superdel­e­gate has his­tor­i­cally been then I look for­ward to receiv­ing the sup­port of Sen­a­tor Kennedy and Sen­a­tor Kerry.”

How this prob­lem will be resolved remains in doubt. Each can­di­date has offered some com­pelling argu­ments for the superdel­e­gates to con­sider. Sen­a­tor Clin­ton points to her wins in all of the big pri­mary states (Cal­i­for­nia, New York, Texas, Ohio, and the con­tested states of Florida and Michi­gan, with Illi­nois being the only excep­tion) with the most elec­toral votes. Obama coun­ters that he has won both more states than Clin­ton (27 to 14) and more pledged del­e­gates (1,414 to 1,243 accord­ing to CNN). Obama’s sup­port­ers also dis­pute the notion that because he didn’t carry those states in the Demo­c­ra­tic pri­mary that it weak­ens his abil­ity to win them in the gen­eral elec­tion as many of these states have solid records of vot­ing for the Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­nee. Con­versely, Obama casts great doubt over whether Clin­ton could win in most of the states he carried.

Some recent polls pro­ject­ing the win­ner in hypo­thet­i­cal gen­eral elec­tion match-ups between Obama and Sen­a­tor John McCain and Clin­ton and McCain in cer­tain key states, may have cast some doubt on this argu­ment. Realclearpolitics.com has been run­ning an aver­age of recent gen­eral elec­tion polls taken by such firms as Ras­mussen, Gallup, NBC/WSJ, Pew Research, FOX News, and CBS News among oth­ers. In the pro­jected gen­eral elec­tion match-ups Clinton-McCain and Obama-McCain have bro­ken the fol­low­ing way in recent weeks (see Table 1).

Table 1. Hypo­thet­i­cal gen­eral elec­tion match-ups by state (Obama-McCain ver­sus Clinton-McCain).

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Gen­eral Election

Match-up

RCP Aver­age Spread

(% by winner)

Penn­syl­va­nia

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Obama-McCain

McCain 2.2

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Clinton-McCain

McCain 0.4

Iowa

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Obama-McCain

Obama 9.7

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Clinton-McCain

McCain 8.0

Ohio

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Obama-McCain

McCain 7.0

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Clinton-McCain

Clin­ton 0.3

Florida

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Obama-McCain

McCain 6.8

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Clinton-McCain

McCain 2.8

New Jer­sey

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Obama-McCain

Obama 2.5

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Clinton-McCain

Clin­ton 6.5

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Like all polling, gen­eral elec­tion polls have to be viewed with some cau­tion. They are at best a snap­shot of sen­ti­ment at a par­tic­u­lar point in time and trends are liable to shift direc­tion par­tic­u­larly by the time the gen­eral elec­tion rolls around. Presently though the Obama-McCain match-up tends to have smaller advan­tages and larger dis­ad­van­tages for Demo­c­ra­tic vot­ers, rel­a­tive to the Clinton-McCain match-up. Iowa is the only excep­tion out of the above states.

What about Those Caucuses?

Cau­cuses are said to be a process by which vot­ers can actu­ally delib­er­ate and vote on pol­icy issues affect­ing the wider com­mu­nity, and there­fore some argue they are much more par­tic­i­pa­tory than ordi­nary pri­maries. But Penn­syl­va­nia gov­er­nor Ed Ren­dell told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that cau­cuses were unde­mo­c­ra­tic because they don’t have an equiv­a­lent to the absen­tee bal­lot and were incon­ve­nient to work­ers on shifts.

What Ren­dell calls the “unde­mo­c­ra­tic” nature of cau­cuses was rec­og­nized in 1988 when the Wash­ing­ton state leg­is­la­ture reached an agree­ment that the use of cau­cuses was a prob­lem issue and voted to run a non-binding pri­mary. Accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Sec­re­tary of State, 200,000 vot­ers signed an Ini­tia­tive to the Leg­is­la­ture in 1988 propos­ing a pres­i­den­tial pri­mary. The leg­is­la­ture adopted this ini­tia­tive in 1989 and the revised code of law (Chap­ter 29A.56) includes the fol­low­ing language:

The…presidential nom­i­nat­ing cau­cus sys­tem in Wash­ing­ton State is unnec­es­sar­ily restric­tive of voter par­tic­i­pa­tion in that it dis­crim­i­nates against the elderly, the infirm, women, the dis­abled, evening work­ers, and oth­ers who are unable to attend cau­cuses and there­fore unable to fully par­tic­i­pate in this most impor­tant qua­dren­nial event that occurs in our demo­c­ra­tic sys­tem of government.

Accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton State leg­is­la­ture cau­cus goers are pri­mar­ily a self-selected group who com­prise the most ded­i­cated par­ti­san activists and not fully rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the will of the people.

Not every­one agrees that cau­cuses are a prob­lem, how­ever. The Obama cam­paign dis­missed Rendell’s argu­ments and points to the Iowa cau­cus, held since the 1800s and cho­sen over the pri­mary sys­tem because it pro­vided a grass roots democracy-in-action method of participation.

So just what is a cau­cus any­way? A cau­cus is the name given to the small, sep­a­rate meet­ings in which vot­ers can select their pre­ferred pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. These meet­ings are run by each polit­i­cal party and can be held in a diverse num­ber of venues such as pub­lic schools, fire­houses, and even an individual’s home. Atten­dees to a cau­cus indi­cate their can­di­date pref­er­ence by a show of hands, a sign-in sheet (infa­mous from recent events in the Texas cau­cus) or by split­ting up into groups rep­re­sent­ing each can­di­date. It is notable that unlike pri­mary elec­tions, the secret bal­lot is not used and the fact that a voter’s pref­er­ence is pub­lic knowl­edge can influ­ence can­di­date selection.

Even so, cau­cuses are just an ini­tial step in the nom­i­nat­ing process. The plethora of dis­trict cau­cuses select del­e­gates to the county con­ven­tions (for instance, the Texas state con­ven­tion will be held on March 29), where in turn state con­ven­tion del­e­gates are cho­sen. It is the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble that del­e­gates can switch their votes dur­ing the process although this is prob­a­bly quite rare in practice.

In addi­tion to the omis­sion of secret bal­lot, cau­cuses are often crit­i­cized by their low atten­dance. As seen in the Table 2, rates are sig­nif­i­cantly lower in cau­cuses than in pri­maries. Four­teen states held cau­cuses in 2008 (Texas holds both a pri­mary and a cau­cus – two-thirds of the del­e­gates are selected in the pri­mary and another third in the cau­cus; Wash­ing­ton State held a cau­cus on Feb. 9 and a non-binding pri­mary derided as a beauty con­test by some observers, on Feb. 19.), but the high­est turnout rate was in Iowa at 16.3%. Con­trast that with the high­est turnout pri­mary state, New Hamp­shire at 52.5%, and you can see the dif­fer­ence in par­tic­i­pa­tion, and thus representativeness.

Table 2. Voter turnout by cau­cuses, pri­maries and state ide­ol­ogy2

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Cau­cus

Turnout %

Ide­ol­ogy

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Pri­mary

Turnout %

Ide­ol­ogy

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Iowa

16.30

Swing

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

New Hamp­shire

52.5

Swing

Nevada

9.50

Swing

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Ohio

40.5

Swing

Min­nesota

7.20

Swing

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Cal­i­for­nia

40.0

Blue

North Dakota

5.90

Red

< ![if !sup­port­Emp­ty­Paras]> < ![endif]>

Ver­mont

39.2

Blue

Col­orado

5.50

Swing
Posted by MLeach on Apr 15th, 2008 and filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site

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