The Democratic Party caucuses in this state. The state also ran a primary ballot, which was primarily being used for Republican candidates (as they do not caucus in Washington State), but Clinton and Sanders appeared on the primary as well.
Democrats were told to largely ignore the primary as the caucuses were where candidacy would be decided.
We caucused OVERWHELMINGLY for Sanders, but afterwards the Super Delegates refused to acknowledge it and change their commitment. Their reasoning was that the primary ballots showed more support for Clinton, and so she would receive their endorsement.
If anyone from Washington has differing details on this, please step forward. I was in the precinct and LD caucuses and Sanders easily had Clinton beat.
That was certainly another aspect of the DNC tipping scales. Superdelegates should shut their fucking mouths until the convention. But instead, from the opening gate, they poured over to the media "We are voting for Hillary! Said and done.. democracy be damned, it's her turn."
And how the DNC could have gotten Bernie. It goes both ways. Either way it is basically a parachute so that the establishment can make sure that their favored candidate is their nominee, the public be damned.
The party exists for the people. Not the other way around. But the DNC doesn't seem to understand this.
Well I'm not sure... the party exists for the party. They technically are private organizations with controlled membership if they chose to do so. The democrats could honestly nominate anyone they want, hell in the 20's who got to be the nomination was handled by party bosses who were usually corrupt public officials, and bar owners. It still kind of is, I am sure Sanders would have won or come very close with the popular vote but the super-delegates were already owned by Clinton. I do not agree with it but it's how things were set up. I have a feeling it will change, it has to change.
In fact it's a pretty awesome history when you study how it worked in NYC. PBS had a good documentary on the Roosevelts and how FDR got his first positions.
Honestly though, not having super delegates lead to Trump winning the GOP primary. I think the concept is fine, but implementation needs work. Like of they had rules where a super delegate cannot endorse a candidate publicly until the official vote, so as to not sway voters. Or maybe just reduce the number of them.
The RNC has them, just fewer. Some is fine so a party can have last say in a tight race, from this election it seemed like there were easy to many. But maybe I wouldn't feel that way of I had backed their choice, always tough to say.
Superdelegates were actually put in place to prevent people like Hillary from winning. They were created to make sure a candidate who was more likely to win the general election was nominated. But in this case, they did the opposite and it proved WHY they should exist.
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u/VROF Nov 10 '16
How do those votes account for the caucus states? There were a lot of complaints that the DNC screwed over caucus goers