Democratic voters around the country had a pretty good week. In the opening two debates televised on MSNBC, party faithful were able to see an array of candidates who offered a vision of America. They spoke about the things they believed in, how we could achieve, goals they imagined and policies they would propose. They did not hear name calling, threats, slanderous claims — and unlike Republican debates, they also didn’t hear a discussion of the size of their male member as a qualifying or disqualifying factor.
With all of this going on, you’d imagine that Democratic voters would have a lot of reason to vote FOR their candidate of choice, and be excited about an open process that allows for the selection of their candidate based on the will of the voter.
Well, that may be true.. unless you are The Intercept, or a several other Twitter and Facebook groups — often proliferated by bots and troll accounts, that are resurrecting claims of the party working hard to rig the election in favor of (someone? anyone?) or that the process is in itself flawed because of how decisions made by the Unity Commission in regards to unpledged delegates (sometimes called Super Delegates).
The problem is many of these reach a conclusion beforehand and offer only a small piece of information, often without any context, in order to try and turn off Democratic voters. This is a great way to keep voters at home, or to turn off voters from the process as a whole.
While there is always a need to continue to improve the party, discussions of how to do so that are done with a combination of half-truths and reckless, poorly thought out conclusions do not help inform voters and they do not help improve the process.
So, as many readers of Nuts & Bolts keep sending me articles and links to Facebook and Twitter feeds, I want to take a moment to respond to, well, concern trolls about the Democratic process. Ready to follow along?
How to Super Delegate Solution was reached
The Unity Commission, which was populated by selections of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, spent months traveling the national and listening to the concerns of any voter who wanted to submit suggestions for how to improve the party.
These concerns did not just reflect unpledged delegates, they also address how do we expand the value of youth in our party, minority communities in our party, ease of access to voting as well as improve the primary process as a whole.
For the entire process, I attended all but one meeting of the Unity Commission, traveling to Texas, Nevada, Chicago, Baltimore, New York, Washington DC — as well as phone conferences and reviews. At these meetings, advocates and others offered forward a series of suggestions.
No side in the Unity Commission, not the side of Senator Sanders nor Hillary Clinton offered an abolition of unpledged. What was offered was the elimination of unpledged delegates to all but federally elected or statewide officeholders. So, in the proposal that came out of the Unity Commission, we would have significantly reduced super delegates, but those groups would still have unpledged first-round votes.
After the Unity Commission was finished, the work was transferred to the Rules & Bylaws Committee to take proposals and turn them into rules. Many of these rules were straight forward, even though they might be difficult. Path to leadership. More transparency in our processes, greater opportunities for new voters.
When it came to the solution on unpledged delegates though, the solution offered ran into significant problems that were almost impossible to overcome.
- While it would reduce the number of total unpledged delegates, because of the makeup of the Democratic House, Senate, and Governors, it would wildly over-empower white men, largely at the expense of minority DNC delegates. It would guarantee a very “white guy” outcome in our convention.
- The decision to leave federal elected while eliminating state officeholders meant that some of the most grassroots members would also be removed from the process.
- It was seen as “backward-looking” and some worried in this situation, it would allow a dominant candidate to quickly get a PR win by racking up federal elected or governors, who would now have even more power to control the message of a candidate destined to win before we even started.
- Many DNC members were unwilling to vote to limit their own voice on the process while, as they saw it, they would overpowering the votes of only the federal elected
After much consideration, a compromise was agreed to by ALL parties. It was backed by advocates and supporters of Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and most of the candidates running for President this time around. The solution was simple: unpledged delegates have no vote at all in the first round UNLESS there is no way they can change the outcome, at which point it is a vote of acclamation (every delegate votes).
And now, the conspiracy theories begin, largely based on a misunderstanding of how convention rules work, and because media sources continue to promote these misunderstandings, it has infected our discourse as a means to discourage future voters.
The myth of intent to deadlock a convention
On a fairly frequent basis, I have had the pleasure to speak with several of our presidential campaigns. Part of it is what we do at Daily Kos, and part of it is my role as a member of the Democratic National Committee. What I have also enjoyed is that no candidate has called me, or any Democratic National Committee member near me and asked us to line up and vote for them in the second round. Now, in fairness, I and others have been offered opportunities to work in campaigns — which obviously I’m not doing — but there wasn’t a whipped process of “line up with me now”.
Why is that?
First, let’s look at the myth that The Intercept and others are promoting and where they get this wrong.
In order to really grasp where we are going, we have to recognize the Democratic Party method to select our nominee is very different than the Republican methodology. In a Republican methodology, many states are “winner take all”. In a field of 5, 10, or 20, whoever wins the state, whether they win it closely or by a large margin gets 100% of the delegates. In a Democratic primary or caucus states, delegates are rewarded in alignment with the percentage received in a caucus or primary to all candidates above the viability threshold, which is set at 15%. There are a lot of reasons for this, including the fact the Democratic Party does not fractionalize or minimize our vote for recognized states, and even in protectorates and Democratic voters abroad, we work to make sure that we recognize the whole of a vote.
This is an important part of our Democratic traditions.
Republicans quickly winnow their field through winner take all, Democratic primaries and caucus are about providing VOTERS the opportunity to determine the top candidates as a whole, from the beginning. This certainly allows more participation, true, but it is also donor protection.
Democratic voters deserve to feel as though their candidates are giving them a fair assessment of their realities to win the nomination. This system allows for that while providing the campaigns and their voters to determine when they are no longer in a position to compete.
Because of the large number of Democratic candidates this year, as well as the position of caucus and primary states, media members have hung onto the idea that many Democratic unpledged delegates are waiting with baited breath for a convention that cannot be decided in the first round, and that will allow them to determine the outcome.
This conclusion, however, is an unbelievable misunderstanding of how Democratic rules actually, you know, work.
While delegates for the convention are bound of their first round, on the second round ALL delegates are free to vote however they see fit.
So, let’s give an example — numbers are fictionalized — of a situation that is INCREDIBLY unlikely to occur — but several candidates coming into the convention with delegates but none having enough to clinch.
Candidate A has 1700 delegates
Candidate B has 1300 delegates
Candidate C has 800 delegates
Candidate D has 400 delegates
Candidate E has 300 delegates
And so on. This has been proposed by many as a “nightmare scenario” where unpledged delegates would step in and broker the convention.
But, if you think about this from a campaign perspective, that argument makes almost no sense. In a second round, with all delegates free to vote however they see fit, candidates are far more likely to work a strategy to get a commitment from ANOTHER CANDIDATE than to chase blocks of unpledged voters.
If Candidate A could get the endorsement of C & D or B, then they would have all the votes they would need. This is not only a cleaner solution, but it is one that the voters have embraced repeatedly before — and one campaigns have already talked about. In fact, because of this, it is far more likely that we see a more civil, strategic campaign, as candidates best path to the nomination early and late is to unify the blocks of voters behind their candidacy.
Every single campaign I and others spoke to about this over the last year instantly recognized this reality. No campaign has advocated a strategy of holding out to the second round to try and bridge a divided unpledged group.
The Intercept acknowledges a conspiracy theory instead of reality:
But the possibility of a brokered convention, with party insiders and superdelegates potentially canceling out the will of voters, has many activists worried.
“In the event of a brokered convention, the donors and lobbyists will insist that the party nominate the establishment candidate,” warns Nick Brana, founder of the Movement for a People’s Party. Brana previously worked with Sanders on delegate outreach.
“Others are party officials and members of Congress who are personally close with the donors, dependent on them, or plan on seeking high-paying corporate and consulting jobs in the future,” Brana said.
“Superdelegates are a reinvention of the party boss system,” Brana added. “They were created to give party insiders veto power over a progressive nominee and they would fulfill that mission.”
With multiple candidates having members connected to the Democratic National Committee, a divided smaller block simply isn’t an easy option, no matter the pressure, to line up in uniform behind anyone — and definitely more difficult than building support among potential delegates for other candidates through endorsement.
Perception is the issue we must combat.
One of the discussions that came up in both the Unity Commission and follow up meetings it that one of the greatest problems the party faced in 2016, and could face in 2020 is the PERCEIVED impact. The Bernie Sanders campaign agreed with this wholeheartedly, as did party leadership. Because one candidate was perceived as having a large edge before the campaign began, it was argued, voters felt as though their participation meant less.
Now, television networks are in a position where they cannot report super delegate support because it is doubtful we vote. Every candidate, no matter who you back, starts at the exact same starting point: zero delegates. The way their delegate count changes is only through the vote of the public.
This allows the public to know that it is only their voice that controls the perception of a candidate doing well or poorly. It is, in the end, the will of the voters that is the sole factor in determining the storyline of the 2020 election.
This is fantastic news. Despite some cases of fear online, it was the largest benefit to the process.
By using delegates as an acquire and go system, concerns voiced from those who are worried about a brokered convention worry about things that are not just unlikely, but candidates themselves have said privately and loudly they would avoid at all cost. Why?
- We will have months of exact numbers and turnouts, thanks to the new rules that govern caucus and primaries.
- The public will have a perception of how candidates are doing and an understanding of how their votes were heard in our process.
- Candidates have all indicated they have no desire to overturn the public will; and should anyone change, it is unlikely to succeed and they recognize it would be of significant harm to a general election campaign.
Final thoughts
Concern trolls have decided to try and shape the early debate — before anyone has cast a single vote — to be a case as to why voters should have problems with the Democratic Party, an agreement backed by all campaigns, and the entire process.
Why take this stance? Because if you use only half of the truth, or you fail to understand the rules you can easily promote conspiratorial views of outcomes that are completely unrealistic, or, in some cases, outright dishonest.
Over the next year, many groups will pop up, attacking the party, the process, or anything else that might challenge Trump. It may pop up as purity. It may pop up as a way to get well-intentioned Democratic voters influenced by only half of the story.
As a matter of math, none of it makes any sense. No campaign is making an active effort to win over fleets of unpledged delegates. If they or others did believe in such a means to alter a convention, you would think at least one campaign would start reaching out immediately to people who can only vote in a brokered convention in the second round.
And yet, no campaign has done so.
That is a reality. And nothing said online by groups promoting fear, uncertainty, doubt, and reasons to oppose whoever the eventual nominee actually turns out to be will ever change that.
Have questions? Feel free to ask!!