The UnDemocratic Democratic Primary

So what’s going on here?

The DNC doesn’t allocate delegates by simply heeding the will of the voters. Instead they calculate their tallies from a combination of “pledged delegates,” which are earned from the actual votes of real people, and “unpledged delegates,” better known as “superdelegates.”

Superdelegates consist of Democratic officeholders, as well as 21 “distinguished members,” a group made up of former presidents, vice presidents, DNC chairs, etc.

In non-political speak, “distinguished members” are really Democrat political insiders and D.C. powerbrokers, not the everyday voters Democrats claim to represent. ABC News recently reported that, “dozens of the 437 delegates in the DNC member category are registered federal and state lobbyists, according to an ABC News analysis. In fact, when you remove elected officials from the superdelegate pool, at least one in seven of the remainder are former or current lobbyists.”

To put the influence of these insiders in stark context: in 2016, there are 712 superdelegates up for grabs, making up nearly 30 percent of the magic number.

Having spent her last quarter century in Washington, it should surprise no one that Secretary Clinton is dominating Senator Sanders with superdelegates, 458 to 22.

As an insurgent candidate, Senator Sanders’ candidacy is fueled by grassroots energy across the country inspired by his socialist message. Yet his chances of getting his party’s nomination are slim and getting narrower by the day.

This scenario is reminiscent of the early 1980s and the original implementation of superdelegates.

According to CNN, the DNC created the process in 1982 “as a continuation of the effort to bring the experienced, more MODERATE members of the party to the convention to act as a ‘ballast’ against the passions of other delegates.”

In 1984, superdelegates powered the “establishment” candidate, former Vice President Walter Mondale (D-MN), over the “insurgent,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson(D-IL), a point not lost on Jackson, who became one of the system’s loudest and most vociferous opponents. In the subsequent election, Jackson blasted superdelegates as “voodoo politics,” and noted that, “when people are inspired and hopeful, they work diligently. When they feel they have not been treated fairly, they are discouraged.”

In 1984, Jackson won 19 percent of the popular vote, but received only 10 percent of the delegate count. The facts are indisputable: whatever the motivation, superdelegates had a chilling effect on the first viable African American presidential candidate, re-routing and suppressing the will of the voters in favor of the establishment choice.

Ironically, Jackson’s lead negotiator against the DNC’s superdelegate process was Harold Ickes, who has since become a close Clinton confidante and a senior advisor to a pro-Clinton Super PAC, and stands to benefit in 2016 from a process he fiercely opposed in 1984.

Far be it from me to give Democrats advice. But if I were Senator Sanders trying to chart a path forward to the nomination, this description of the 1988 presidential race by Karen Tumulty, then of the Los Angeles Times, would give me chills: “With his stirring oratory and populist message, Jackson has mobilized hundreds of thousands of voters who have not participated in elections before.”

Those words are as fitting of Reverend Jackson in 1988 as they are of Senator Sanders today and so are the likely outcomes of their candidacies.