LogFAQs > #879026183

I have no problem with the concept of super delegates. A fail-safe at the convention to prevent someone from getting the nomination who would be a really bad idea -- like if it turned out Hillary had broken the law, or John Edwards had taken an insurmountable lead before his whole cheating on his cancer-stricken wife thing was discovered -- that's a good thing. Awesome.

But that is NOT how it's used. It's used as a cudgel to beat back candidates the DNC doesn't favor before they can garner any momentum. News reporters will say, "It's only 4 primaries into the season and Bernie's down to Hillary by 500 delegates*, how can he ever recover?!" and later on, "3/4 of states have already voted and Bernie's only closed the gap to 400 delegates difference! It's pretty much impossible for him to overtake Hillary now!"
* "98% of them are super delegates, but we'll keep that in the fine print"

The core message being, "Why don'tchya just give up and vote for the inevitable choice? Or stay home. Why waste the time voting for a sure loser?"

Super delegates should be barred from publicly favoring any primary candidate until the DNC convention or at least until all primaries are over. If they violate that rule, remove them as a super delegate and replace w/ someone else. They shouldn't be allowed to influence the primaries.