Nerve Endings Firing Away

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The primary season to elect the nominees for the Presidential election for both the Republican and Democratic parties has been pretty interesting this time. Usually the primary candidates battle it out for the first few states and then after those states vote, the nominee is all but decided. traditionally it has been Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina that had decided the nominees. However this year has been different and even after a year-long campaign before even the first primary and two-thirds of the states done with their primaries, the Democratic nominee is still undecided. Although McCain has emerged as the Republican nominee, Huckabee is still winning states throwing the party in chaos.

The Democratic process however is much more interesting as the primary voters face two near-equally capable candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The way these nomination process work is that the candidates have to garner at least 2025 delegate votes in the convention to win the nomination. Who are these delegates? Well, when voters vote for their choice of the candidate they are in fact voting for a delegate to represent them at the convention who would then vote for the candidate. The wider the margin of victory for the candidate, the larger is the delegate share in that particular state. More populous states get more delegates. Republicans on the other hand have a winner-take-all system i.e. the candidate that wins the most votes in a state wins all the delegates at stake in that state; just like the ensuing Presidential election. So what is the problem, you say? Let us wait for all primaries to get over on the Democratic side and we’ll soon have a winner albeit by a couple of delegates.

But the Democratic Party put in place another layer of complexity - the Super Delegates. There are 796 super delegates at this year’s convention and they comprise of elected Democratic officials like Senators, Congressmen, Governors, and members of the Democratic National Committee including former Presidents, VPs, Speakers, Senate and House Leaders, and former chairs of the committee. These super delegates are unpledged i.e. they can vote for whichever candidates they like as opposed to those other ordinary delegates who are expected to vote in line with their state’s voting decisions. These Super Delegates were in part instituted to maintain control of the elites over the nomination process. Considering how close this year’s election is, the role of these super delegates are even more important.

But within all these democratic processes we are currently seeing, isn’t this Super Delegate business undemocratic? Shouldn’t it be left to the people i.e. Democratic voters to choose their own candidate? If ultimately the Super Delegates are going to go against the wishes of the voters and vote for the individual who lost the popular vote, then why are we having this charade of primaries? Let the big bosses sit in their smoke-filled rooms and select as opposed to elect their favorite candidate. Hillary Clinton currently trailing in the delegate count has the allegiance of more Super Delegates than Obama and that isn’t surprising given her long relationship with the Democratic establishment thanks to her husband, Bill Clinton. It has been argued that the Super Delegates might wait and watch until the end of the last primary and will ultimately go for the candidate that wins the most ordinary delegates. In that case, why include the votes of the Super Delegates at all? And I’m not sure all Super Delegates are going to agree to that if their favorite candidate is trailing and given that all those super delegates will be individuals with big-sized egos, it is going to be difficult to reconcile them all.

Last but not the least, would the Democratic Party that made such a big fuss when Bush having lost the popular vote to Gore got elected the President want to resort to similarly undemocratic processes? The United States considers everyone’s vote equal so having few individuals bestowed with disproportionately is downright unfair. The only way the Democratic Party can lose this Presidential election is by squabbling amongst themselves which would lead to now-enthused voters sitting at home. The Republicans have always had larger voter turnouts and only in this election cycle has the Democratic Party beaten them to it but finally it is the election in November that count and you do not win elections by distrusting your primary voter base that has so enthusiastically participated in the process that they consider democratic.

by Patrix | on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 1:52 pm | Politicking, Recommended, United States . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.