traditional voter suppression accusations are lobbed against Republicans every two years. Whether the accusations are of voter registrations being cleaned up to remove people who have moved out of state, or who have been declared dead, the media and the Democratic party have always claimed that the Republicans were using voter disenfranchisement to tip the election in their favor. (Ironically Sen. Schumer argued that the 2020 election should not be decided by the voters because he feared that Trump might cheat. This belief is the ultimate version of voter disenfranchisement).
With Bernie Sanders rising in the polls, Politico is reporting that a small group of high-ranking DNC officials has begun to brainstorm ways to prevent Sen. Sanders from winning the nomination. Allegedly, the plan they have come up with is to re-write the rules to allow the superdelegates to vote on the first ballot for who should be the party’s nominee.
The current rules state that superdelegates can only cast their votes on the second ballot if the first vote fails to garner a nominee with enough delegates, forcing the party into a contested convention. With Sen. Sanders’ campaign being hurt in 2016 by a large majority of the superdelegates expressing support for Hillary Clinton, many of Sanders’ supporters do not trust and actually dislike the superdelegate system.
With Senators Warren and Sanders’ polling numbers, if one were to drop out, it is likely that the remaining candidate could surpass former Vice President Biden as the Democratic frontrunner. With the “traditional” Democratic leadership being hesitant to support either of them, it is entirely possible that the Democrats could be forced into a contested convention.
If leadership does decide to change the rules, they will undoubtedly lose the support of the left-wing of their party. If the rules are not changed and they decide not to back the candidate who has the most delegates (and voter support), they again will lose the support of millions of their most faithful voters.
Their only hope for a chance of a unified party is for Biden to show that he is capable of becoming the party’s nominee and convincing some of Sen. Sanders’ and Sen. Warren’s current supporters to vote for him during the primary.
Yet, with the Democrats’ attempt to undo the 2016 election with a sham impeachment, it should not be a surprise to anyone that the leaders of their party could seem to care less about what voters actually want.
