It’s Time to Put Pressure on Superdelegates

Shaun King is absolutely right — the superdelegate system is bad for the Democratic Party:

… on Saturday, Sanders won every county in Washington state and won nearly 75% of the vote. It was a drubbing.

Will of the people be damned, the superdelegates in Washington all said they are voting for Clinton, including Gov. Jay Inslee, U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and U.S. Reps. Jim McDermott, Suzan DelBene, Rick Larsen, Adam Smith, Denny Heck and Derek Kilmer.

This is preposterous. Sanders handily won the state and won every congressional district by a landslide, but the governor, the senators and the congresspeople don’t care. They are firmly against the will of the people in their state.

Not a single superdelegate vote from Washington is going to Sanders.

Not one.

In fact, this is happening all over the country.

In spite of Sanders winning 15 states — including some by an 80-20 margin — over 94% of the 498 superdelegates have said they are backing Clinton anyway. Clinton currently has 469 superdelegate votes to just 29 for Sanders.

This has basically been the Clinton campaign strategy from the beginning: Get an early lead, based on Hillary’s name recognition — and the fact that most people had never even heard of Bernie Sanders until recently — and then hold on for dear life. The Clinton campaign has racked up tens of thousands of absentee ballots all over the country from people before they even had a chance to hear about Bernie Sanders and his policy proposals.

And this does not even address the fact that most of the superdelegates have received money from the Clinton campaign. This is positively spun by the Democratic Party establishment as “helping other candidates down the ticket,” but it’s a pay-off, essentially. The superdelegates have received thousands of dollars from the Clinton campaign for their promise of a vote for Hillary at the convention. This is the most cynical kind of politics that we’re all sick and tired of.

As King says in his New York Daily News piece today, “Don’t say superdelegates aren’t determining this race. They are, and the practice should be abolished — immediately.” I would just add, until then, let’s put pressure on these superdelegates until they do the right thing and support the candidate chosen by the people of their state!

One thing we can all do immediately is sign this petition.