05-18-2016, 03:26 AM
I know that politics and hypocrisy go together, but really ...
Sanders tries to position himself as an outsider and not a politician, a man of principle. He has been railing against the superdelegate component of the Democratic primary system. He says it is anti-democratic and allows the will of the voters to be overridden. Of course, there is truth to this. It allows the party to prevent an unelectable radical becoming the nominee as happened when George McGovern won. Influential party members are thus appointed as superdelegates and make up 15% of the delegates at the Democratic Convention. They vote as they wish and are not bound by who won their state primaries.
If he were consistent in his views, he would look to the pledged delegates alone to determine who wins the nomination. But there's no joy in that method for him. Clinton has a lead in pledged delegates of around 300 and he's not likely to make much of a dent in her lead. This is the most faithful reflection of the popular vote.
He is therefore resorting to anti-democratic methods to overcome the popular vote. For instance, his supporters have gone mental at the Nevada convention because it resulted in Clinton winning a slight majority of the pledged delegates. They say the establishment robbed Sanders of a majority. Yet Clinton won the vote in Nevada handily. It appears that Sanders "out-organised" Clinton and managed to ensure that more of his supporters ended up being elected to the convention even though Clinton had more votes. This is the sort of thing that Cruz did to turn the tables on Trump who won the popular vote. When the party disqualified a number of Sanders' delegates because they were not registered voters at the time required by the rules, Sanders lost the ability to thwart the popular vote.
Yes, if there's a system in place, a candidate has a right to take advantage of it. But by attempting to subvert the popular vote, it becomes difficult to complain that the opponent is denying the popular vote.
He is also trying to argue that the superdelegates should consider themselves bound by the vote in their states. If all of a state's superdelegates are bound to vote for the winning candidate, then the delegate count will no longer be proportional to the votes each candidate received. If the superdelegates vote to reflect the proportional vote, then Clinton wins. I doubt that Sanders would win even if all of the superdelegates went to the winner in each state. But Sanders has an answer to this. He says that Clinton's wins in Red States, particularly in the South, should be ignored. On the other hand, he never seems to discount his wins in states like Alaska and West Virginia which he almost certainly would lose in a general election.
If Sanders argues that he's entitled to play the system in Nevada as them's the rules, he can't credibly argue that Clinton shouldn't be able to take advantage of the superdelegate system as it is written - unbound delegates who vote as they see fit regardless of the popular vote in their states.
Sanders tries to position himself as an outsider and not a politician, a man of principle. He has been railing against the superdelegate component of the Democratic primary system. He says it is anti-democratic and allows the will of the voters to be overridden. Of course, there is truth to this. It allows the party to prevent an unelectable radical becoming the nominee as happened when George McGovern won. Influential party members are thus appointed as superdelegates and make up 15% of the delegates at the Democratic Convention. They vote as they wish and are not bound by who won their state primaries.
If he were consistent in his views, he would look to the pledged delegates alone to determine who wins the nomination. But there's no joy in that method for him. Clinton has a lead in pledged delegates of around 300 and he's not likely to make much of a dent in her lead. This is the most faithful reflection of the popular vote.
He is therefore resorting to anti-democratic methods to overcome the popular vote. For instance, his supporters have gone mental at the Nevada convention because it resulted in Clinton winning a slight majority of the pledged delegates. They say the establishment robbed Sanders of a majority. Yet Clinton won the vote in Nevada handily. It appears that Sanders "out-organised" Clinton and managed to ensure that more of his supporters ended up being elected to the convention even though Clinton had more votes. This is the sort of thing that Cruz did to turn the tables on Trump who won the popular vote. When the party disqualified a number of Sanders' delegates because they were not registered voters at the time required by the rules, Sanders lost the ability to thwart the popular vote.
Yes, if there's a system in place, a candidate has a right to take advantage of it. But by attempting to subvert the popular vote, it becomes difficult to complain that the opponent is denying the popular vote.
He is also trying to argue that the superdelegates should consider themselves bound by the vote in their states. If all of a state's superdelegates are bound to vote for the winning candidate, then the delegate count will no longer be proportional to the votes each candidate received. If the superdelegates vote to reflect the proportional vote, then Clinton wins. I doubt that Sanders would win even if all of the superdelegates went to the winner in each state. But Sanders has an answer to this. He says that Clinton's wins in Red States, particularly in the South, should be ignored. On the other hand, he never seems to discount his wins in states like Alaska and West Virginia which he almost certainly would lose in a general election.
If Sanders argues that he's entitled to play the system in Nevada as them's the rules, he can't credibly argue that Clinton shouldn't be able to take advantage of the superdelegate system as it is written - unbound delegates who vote as they see fit regardless of the popular vote in their states.