338 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biographysuperdelegates of today. In 1984, Jesse Jackson complained that the rules had been stacked against
him by organized labor and Democrats aligned with Kennedy and former vice president Walter
Mondale. In the 1988 election, Jackson claimed that in Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey, and other
states that awarded delegates on a winner-take-all basis within each congressional district, he had
been robbed of his share of the delegates. “We raised hell about the unfairness of the system that
was in play,” said Steve Cobble, Jackson’s delegate director. The rotten compromise of 1988,
extorted by Jackson without regard to the viability of future nominees, mandated proportional
representation as the only method for states to apportion their delegates. When the Hunt
Commission created the superdelegates in 1982, they constituted about 15 percent of all delegates;
since then, they have grown to include some big city mayors, former DNC chairmen, plus former
Democratic presidents and vice presidents. Superdelegates now number 795 and constitute 20
percent of the total. The McGovern reforms “have been watered down significantly by this super-
delegate stuff,” said one Democratic official. “Any time you have that number of delegates that are
not elected by the people, it’s wrong. It’s just wrong.” The obvious problem is that, under the
proportional representation rule imposed in 1988, it becomes mathematically difficult for a winner
to emerge from the primaries. “The unintended consequence has been to make it harder to get a
consensus as to who the nominee should be,” said another official, who supports a return to some
winner-take-all primaries to hasten the process. “The same people who complain about Electoral
College strong-arming can’t very well have a de facto Electoral College,” Jackson said. “That
would be suicidal.” (Alan Wirzbicki, “Changes have left uncertainty: ‘80s rules reform skews
Democrats’ nominee process,” Boston Globe, February 17, 2008)
The Democratic party rules to delegate selection are currently in blatant contradiction to the
rules of the November election. In the Democratic primaries, there is proportional representation;
in the Electoral College it is winner take all with a few minor exceptions. In the November
election, everything is decided by voting through secret ballot; in the Democratic Party, there are
caucuses where loudmouth Malthusian elitists and affluent suburban ideologues can intimidate
blue-collar working people, elderly women, and other core constituencies, sometimes browbeating
them into supporting candidates they do not want, and are sure not to vote for in November. There
are many reports of abuses by the Obamakins in this direction. In Texas this year, Mrs. Clinton
won the popular vote convincingly, but still ended up with fewer delegates because the Obama
lemming legions were able and willing to stay through the lengthy evening caucuses, thus giving
Obama more delegates — surely a scandal for the Democratic Party.. In the Electoral College, the
number of votes each state has is in rough proportion to its population, although smaller states fare
slightly better because they start off with a minimum of three electoral votes. In the Democratic
Party, by contrast, small states and states that are likely to go Republican get a special bonus of
delegates compared to vital, indispensable Democratic states like Michigan, Ohio, and
Pennsylvania. Finally, in the Electoral College it is more or less one-person one-vote; not so in the
Democratic Party, where the Jesse Jackson reforms make sure that an inner-city black vote is worth
much more in terms of electing delegates than a white, blue-collar, rural vote.
THE DEMOCRATIC RULES: “CRAZY”
The inherent absurdity of this entire system for a political party whose announced goal was not
to follow orders from Wall Street, nor to celebrate the ethereal virtues of multiculturalism and
political correctness, but was rather supposed to have to do with winning elections, was pointed out
by Steve and Cokie Roberts, a team of seasoned observers of the Washington scene. They correctly
noted: “Yes, the Clinton camp made strategic blunders that allowed Obama to score heavily in