We hear that “superdelegates” to the Democratic National Convention may deprive the presidential candidate with the most votes from getting the nomination.
The argument is that “unelected” officeholders and party leaders shouldn’t overrule the will of millions of voters in party primaries and caucuses.
The problem with that argument is that most of the superdelegates are elected.
Look at the superdelegates from this state: Chris Gregoire, our elected governor; Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, our elected U.S. senators; Jay Inslee, Rick Larson, Brian Baird, Norm Dicks, Jim McDermott and Adam Smith, the state’s elected members of the House of Representatives; Ron Sims, the elected chief executive of our largest county; and former U.S. House Speaker Tom Foley, elected many times in eastern Washington. The others are the state’s party chairman and vice chairman, plus the state’s national committee members, all elected by representatives of county parties, who are elected by the precinct committee officers whom we elect every two years.
Gregoire, Inslee, Larson, Baird, Dicks, McDermott and Smith, who will all be on the ballot this fall, all have an interest in having a candidate who will draw the most Democratic voters to the polls.
My reading of history gives me a nostalgic feeling about superdelegates. Their predecessors gave us Abraham Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman.
We’ve all heard of the 1860 Republican convention that gave Lincoln the nomination after promising cabinet positions to his main rivals; the conventions of the 1920s that took dozens of ballots to pick nominees; the 1948 Democratic Convention, when Southerners walked out over Truman’s integration policies; and the 1952 Republican Convention, when Sen. Richard Nixon and Gov. Earl Warren swung California for Eisenhower; Nixon became vice president and Warren the chief justice.
About a century ago, Wisconsin started the first presidential primary. The idea spread so slowly that, as late as 1968, Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination without running in a single primary.
The party changed its rules to give rank-and-file voters more say, but that led to George McGovern, who lost badly in 1972; and Jimmy Carter, who barely won in 1976 but never got along with his party and lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
So, the party changed its rules again to give party officials and officeholders more of a say.
Someday, we should adopt a national primary, but, until we do this is the system we’re stuck with.
State nominating conventions
With the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the state’s top-two primary is constitutional, the state’s political parties are planning conventions to designate their approved candidates. Candidates can bill themselves as official party nominees, but that may have little effect on Washington’s traditionally independent voters.
I wonder if state Republicans will endorse Attorney General Rob McKenna, a rising star in the party who argued against the party in the Supreme Court.
Evan Smith is the Enterprise Forum editor. Send comments to entopinionheraldnet.com
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