Got a Problem? Ask the Super
By GERALDINE A. FERRARO
Published: February 25, 2008
AS the race for the Democratic presidential nomination nears its end and attention turns to the role of so-called superdelegates in choosing the nominee, it is instructive to look at why my party created this class of delegates.
After the 1980 presidential election, the Democratic Party was in disarray. That year, Senator Ted Kennedy had challenged President Jimmy Carter for the presidential nomination, and Mr. Kennedy took the fight to the convention floor by proposing 23 amendments to the party platform. When it was all over, members of Congress who were concerned about their re-election walked away from the president and from the party. The rest of the campaign was plagued by infighting.
In 1982, we tried to remedy some of the partys internal problems by creating the Hunt Commission, which reformed the way the party selects its presidential nominees. Because I was then the vice chairwoman of the House Democratic Caucus, Tip ONeill, the speaker of the House, appointed me as his representative to the commission. The commission considered several reforms, but one of the most significant was the creation of superdelegates, the reform in which I was most involved.
Democrats had to figure out a way to unify our party. What better way, we reasoned, than to get elected officials involved in writing the platform, sitting on the credentials committee and helping to write the rules that the party would play by?
Most officeholders, however, were reluctant to run as delegates in a primary election running against a constituent who really wants to be a delegate to the partys national convention is not exactly good politics.
So we created superdelegates and gave that designation to every Democratic member of Congress. Today the 796 superdelegates also include Democratic governors, former presidents and vice presidents, and members of the Democratic National Committee and former heads of the national committee.
These superdelegates, we reasoned, are the partys leaders. They are the ones who can bring together the most liberal members of our party with the most conservative and reach accommodation. They would help write the platform. They would determine if a delegate should be seated. They would help determine the rules. And having done so, they would have no excuse to walk away from the party or its presidential nominee.
It worked. In 1984 I headed the partys platform committee. We produced the longest platform in Democratic history, a document that stated the partys principles in broad terms that neither the most liberal nor the most conservative elected officials would denounce. It generated no fights at the convention. It was a document that no one would walk away from. We lost in 1984, big time. But that loss had nothing to do with Democratic Party infighting.
Today, with the possibility that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will end up with about the same number of delegates after all 50 states have held their primaries and caucuses, the pundits and many others are saying that superdelegates should not decide who the nominee will be. That decision, they say, should rest with the rank-and-file Democrats who went to the polls and voted.
But the superdelegates were created to lead, not to follow. They were, and are, expected to determine what is best for our party and best for the country. I would hope that is why many superdelegates have already chosen a candidate to support.
Besides, the delegate totals from primaries and caucuses do not necessarily reflect the will of rank-and-file Democrats. Most Democrats have not been heard from at the polls. We have all been impressed by the turnout for this years primaries clearly both candidates have excited and engaged the partys membership but, even so, turnout for primaries and caucuses is notoriously low. It would be shocking if 30 percent of registered Democrats have participated.
If that is the case, we could end up with a nominee who has been actively supported by, at most, 15 percent of registered Democrats. Thats hardly a grassroots mandate.
More important, although many states like New York have closed primaries in which only enrolled Democrats are allowed to vote, in many other states Republicans and independents can make the difference by voting in Democratic primaries or caucuses.
In the Democratic primary in South Carolina, tens of thousands of Republicans and independents no doubt voted, many of them for Mr. Obama. The same rules prevail at the Iowa caucuses, in which Mr. Obama also triumphed.
He won his delegates fair and square, but those delegates represent the wishes not only of grassroots Democrats, but also Republicans and independents. If rank-and-file Democrats should decide who the partys nominee is, each state should pass a rule allowing only people who have been registered in the Democratic Party for a given time not nonmembers or day-of registrants to vote for the partys nominee.
Perhaps because I have endorsed Mrs. Clinton, I have noticed that most of the people complaining about the influence of the superdelegates are supporters of Mr. Obama. I cant help thinking that their problem with the superdelegates may not be that theyre unrepresentative, but rather that they are perceived as disproportionately likely to support Mrs. Clinton.
And I am watching, with great disappointment, people whom I respect in the Congress who endorsed Hillary Clinton I assume because she was the leader they felt could best represent the party and lead the country now switching to Barack Obama with the excuse that their constituents have spoken.
I may be a cynic, but Im a fairly knowledgeable political cynic. If Mr. Obama wins the nomination, those members are undoubtedly concerned that they would be inviting a primary challenge in their next re-election campaign by failing to support his candidacy.
But if they are actually upset over the diminished clout of rank-and-file Democrats in the presidential nominating process, then I would love to see them agitating to force the party to seat the delegates elected by the voters in Florida and Michigan. In those two states, the votes of thousands of rank-and-file party members will not be counted because their states voted on dates earlier than those authorized by the national party.
Because both states went strongly for Mrs. Clinton, standing up for the voices of grassroots Democrats in Florida and Michigan would prove the integrity of the superdelegate-bashers. The people of those states surely dont deserve to be disenfranchised simply because the leaders of their state parties brought them to the polls on a day that had not been endorsed by the leaders of our national party a slight the voters might not easily forget in November.
As it happens, the superdelegates themselves can solve this problem. At this summers Democratic national convention in Denver, the superdelegates could assert their leadership on the credentials and rules committees. That is, after all, one of the reasons they were created in the first place in 1982.
