Summoning superdelegates: the importance of superdelegates in this presidential election has been repeatedly referenced. Learn who these superdelegates are and how they are chosen

New American, The, July 7, 2008 by Jack Kenny

Before Sen. Barack Obama secured enough delegates to assure his nomination for president, it appeared that the contest between Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton, the early favorite of the Democratic party establishment, might be decided by the nearly 800 unelected "superdelegates," who make up roughly 20 percent of all delegates to this year's Democratic National Convention. In fact, even though Obama beat Clinton in terms of delegates selected by the primaries and caucuses, it was really the swing of superdelegates to Obama that enabled him to obtain a majority of the delegates and force Clinton to withdraw from the race.

Yet despite all the talk about them, little mention has been made of who these unelected delegates are and how they came to have such a potentially important role in the nominating process.

The rules of the Democratic National Committee do not use the term "superdelegates," but refer instead to "unpledged delegates" and party leaders and elected officials. The rules require that national committee members, former Democratic presidents and vice presidents and all Democratic members of Congress, as well as former House and Senate majority leaders and House speakers, be included as delegates from the states in which they reside. Democratic governors are also included. Other state elected officials and big city mayors are chosen by their respective state parties, usually at a party convention or by vote of the state party committee. While the "superdelegates" may have their preferences, they are not pledged to any candidate and are free to vote at the convention for or against the candidate who has won the most pledged delegates in the primaries and caucuses.

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Given the proliferation of presidential primaries in recent elections, it is easy to forget that choosing presidential nominees by popular vote is a relatively new concept. As recently as the 1960s, presidential primaries were few and far between. Most delegates were chosen by governors, mayors, and other "party bosses" and could be counted on to toe the "party line." In 1968, Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy competed for delegates in primary campaigns, but Vice President Hubert Humphrey captured the nomination at the Chicago convention without having entered a single primary.

That led to a demand for a reform of the rules. The Democrats did away with the so-called unit rule, wherein a state's entire delegation would vote in unison for one candidate, as determined by a majority of the delegation. They also appointed South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, a late entry into the '68 contest, as the first chairman of the commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection. By 1972, the party had done away with winner-take-all primaries, requiring instead that candidates be awarded delegates in proportion to the votes they received. It also required each delegation to have "reasonable representation" of women, minorities, and young people in proportion to their population in the home state.

McGovern, a leading opponent of the Vietnam War and a champion of legalized abortion, homosexual rights, and amnesty for draft dodgers, was the choice of the liberal "grass-roots" activists who made up a majority of that year's convention delegates. The diminished role of the "party bosses" was seen most dramatically when the Illinois delegation, chaired by Chicago's powerful Mayor Richard Daley, was tossed out over violations of the selection process. A delegation led by Jesse Jackson was seated in its place.

The disdain in which many of the displaced party elders held the new selection process was reinforced when McGovern carried but a single state (Massachusetts) in a 49-state loss to President Richard Nixon. Four years later, Jimmy Carter derailed political outsider George Wallace's populist campaign by positioning himself as an outsider and attracting many votes that would otherwise have gone to Wallace. He went on to capture both the Democratic nomination and the White House in 1976, only to lose the presidency after a single, uninspiring term. The Democratic National Committee adopted more rules changes, including the addition of superdelegates, who made up about 14 percent of convention delegates in 1984.

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The new rules served the apparent purpose of providing a counterweight to the popular vote and supporting the party establishment candidates against insurgent challengers. Former Vice President Walter Mondale and Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, McGovern's campaign manager in '72, were close in total votes coming into the convention, but Mondale won the nomination easily with overwhelming support from the superdelegates.

Yet his fate in November was nearly identical to McGovern's 12 years earlier. Mondale carried only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia, as Ronald Reagan easily won reelection.

Though there remains no clear-cut case of a nomination turning on the vote of the unelected superdelegates, the potential is there, and many have criticized the system as undemocratic. It is, however, at least debatable that the candidates we choose in our primaries or caucuses are better than those whose nominations were sealed in "smoke-filled rooms" in those bygone days when Mayor Daley raised voters from the dead.