The race for the Democratic nomination in this year’s election cycle has brought the forefront the inner workings of primary politics in the Democratic Party. In particular, ever since the much anticipated Super Duper Tuesday results, which traditionally seals the deal in anointing the party’s candidate, the media has begun tallying each candidates total number of pledged delegates and unpledged (or “super”) delegates, with different networks giving their own projections. As if the outdated and seemingly useless Electoral College system for the general election weren’t enough, this whole delegates mess only makes matters worse. Personally I’m not up to speed on how this process exactly works, who put in it place from the start, and why it was instituted, but without knowing the intricacies of the nominating convention, I can say that it only embarrasses not just the Democratic Party, but also the country as a whole. The notion that the eventual nominee for President could be decided by a small number of party bosses who weren’t even elected into office for the purpose of playing the role of superdelegate calls into the question the Democratic Party’s real commitment to principles that lie at its core: universal suffrage, equal representation, and participatory government. With the rate at which the primary is going, with a close race coming up in Wisconsin, and with Obama closing in on Hillary in Texas, it is conceivable that even after the March 4, there is no clear winner of this already overly drawn out primary season. If this race gets dragged all the way to Denver, it will be high-level meetings, back-door negotiating, and favor-currying rather than the voters that will give either Clinton or Obama the single or double-digit lead in delegates s/he needs to seal the deal. So really, the voters may not even matter. Sounds like this system was designed by the same people who handed Bush the presidency in 2000, doesn’t it?
Hopefully the primary won’t pan out quite that way, and there will be a nominee before Denver. But in the event that Clinton and Obama are duking it out all the way into the summer, while McCain is ripping on both of them and unifying the Republican party all at once, the 2008 Democratic presidential primary will underscore just how ridiculous party politics can get. And just like the Florida debacle in 2000 resulted in Congress passing the Help America Vote Act (which admittedly hasn’t finished the job of ending voter fraud), maybe the Democrats will actually decide to practice what they preach and overhaul their nominating process so that it is the will of the people, and not the connections made with the old guard establishment party leaders, that determines the party’s nominee.
