June 2, 2008:
In our reality-based world, of course, you go for the nomination with the delegate-selection system you have, not the one you try to shat out halfway through the fifteenth round of the fight. Yes, caucuses were created to stimulate popular participation and build a base more inclined to activist participation, and superdelegates were created to counteract the influence of caucuses, and Iowa and New Hampshire get their special privileges because…because…shit, I got nothing. Nor does anyone else. At some point, the Dems will revert to a model like the GOPs, and the GOP will move closer to the Dem model to prevent what happened to them this year, and the lion will lie down with the porterhouse…
…Game Over. Everything else is bookkeeping.
This is an object lesson for Team Bernie, who failed to go to school on the shortcomings of Team HRC eight years before. Some states have primaries, and some have caucuses. Those primaries may be open to non-registered voters or they may not. Some states hand out delegates in differing proportions, some have no delegates pledged, it’s a gigantic mishmash. Your choices are to learn the system and use it to best effect, or modify and change the system – before you start. If you’ve decided that all the fines in Monopoly go to the bank instead of Free Parking, you can’t demand a chunk of change because you landed on it first after your opponent built eight houses and a hotel on the green spaces.
If you’re going to try to steal something, the smash-and-grab is never preferable to picking the lock. It’s hard to learn to pick a lock. It takes time to case the joint. You have to have a plan. That’s why heists get entire motion pictures and smash-and-grab jobs get 20 seconds in a montage with “Take My Breath Away” as comedy background music.
The Democratic Party is ripe for a heist. It’s been done before. George McGovern was the Danny Ocean of 1970, and rebuilt a system that he could crack himself in 1972 with the greatest of ease. That he was a disastrous candidate in the general election doesn’t reflect on his cleverness in getting that nomination for himself, and it’s arguable that the superdelegates that Sanders alternately decried and banked on were a reaction to both McGovern’s cleverness and Kennedy’s kamikaze run in 1980 which fatally crippled the Carter campaign. (And arguably to Reagan’s similar feat in 1976. At that point, looking at both teams, you have to start taking precautions. Republicans didn’t, and now, Trump.)
I suspect that HRC may throw Team Sanders the sop of a place on the rules committee for 2020, and it’s possible that we may see the end of the superdelegates (who, after all this time, have never swung the nomination away from the popular-vote frontrunner). Their presence is an atavistic reminder of a time when state parties and state conventions sent delegates unhindered by caucus or primary outcomes, and the convention was a decision-making process instead of a four-night infomercial and Spring Break for poli-sci majors and small-town lawyers. But the kind of signaling process they offer can just as easily be done via endorsement now, and the elimination of the supers is probably going to be the price of peace through the autumn. One hopes that the candidates of 2020 will profit by the lesson of 1972, though: when the game starts, make sure more than one person has read the inside of the box lid.