A Running Commentary

In one of the many great episodes of The West Wing, Josh and Donna have a debate about taxes. Donna, the naïve idealist, wants to know why the government takes so much of her income to pay for things on her behalf. Shouldn’t she be able to make those decisions herself? “I want my money back,” she demands. “No,” Josh answers, “We don’t do that, we’re Democrats”.

Inherent in the Democratic Party is this principle: people can’t be trusted to know what to do so we as a party must do it for them. This is not intended as a critique so much as an observation. From FDR’s New Deal to LBJ’s Great Society, the Democrat’s theory is that government should regulate, control, and decide things for people. Accordingly, nothing seems more typically Democrat than this concept of superdelegates.

The general nominating scheme in the United States is for voters, through various state primaries and caucuses, to select delegates to attend their party’s convention and decide the ticket and platform for the election. Technically these delegates are representatives free to vote as they see fit, though the coagulating of national opinion via mass-media over the last 50 years has led to a general expectation that delegates follow the lead of voters. In the early 1980’s Democrats took the delegate concept one-step further, creating an extra layer of superdelegates free from ties to any primary or caucus results.

Party stalwarts like Geraldine Ferraro, whose New York Times op-ed piece this week defends superdelegates, point back to the disorder of the 1980 convention as justification for the scheme. In 1979 Jimmy Carter’s presidency was, by and large, an abysmal failure. The American economy was in the gutter, gas shortages plagued the nation, and the military was in shambles. On July 15th Carter gave perhaps the worst speech ever a sitting president, in which he lectured the American people for worshipping “self-indulgence and consumption” and told them they must “conquer the criss of spirit in our country.”

Many Democrats saw the writing on the wall. Ronald Reagan was coming and there was no way Carter would stop him. Sen. Ted Kennedy fought hard in the primaries to gain the nomination over the incumbent Carter. Kennedy lost but ultimately took the fight to the convention floor, asking for delegates pledged to Carter to be released to him.

Seizing on the “disarray”, as Ms. Ferraro calls it, the Democrats formed a commission in 1981 that arrived at a predictable solution. Obviously these delegates couldn’t be trusted. The big wigs of the party needed to help the fickle people with their indecisiveness. The Democrats adopted a system whereby their governors, former presidents and vice presidents, National Committee members, and former Committee heads all have elite status as superdelegates. Almost 800 such superdelegates are free to vote as they please in 2008.

Not being one myself, I observe with amusement the Democrats’ hand wringing over whether the superdelegates should give the nomination to Hillary or Obama. Surely they must trust the big wigs to make these decisions. Otherwise, why are they Democrats?