« on: February 13, 2016, 06:35:57 pm »
Morning Jolt
[/color]... with Jim Geraghty[/size]
[/color]The Coming Dem-aggeddon . . In 2008, we saw the Democrats, after a long, hard-fought and divisive primary, unite and win the general election by a big margin -- helped along by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Can that party unite again?
It’s overstating it to say that the 2016 Democratic presidential primary is rigged. But it’s pretty reasonable to argue that the party’s establishment -- the Democratic National Committee, the elected lawmakers and movers and shakers -- have put a thumb on the scale for Hillary Clinton that will be difficult to overcome:
This is what makes Clinton so powerful in the Democratic race -- even while she and Sanders battle it out among rank-and-file voters, she has a massive lead among superdelegates. Altogether, she already has 394 delegates and superdelegates to Sanders’s 44 -- a nearly ninefold lead.
Think about that -- we’ve had one tie (Iowa) and one landslide Sanders win (New Hampshire) and she’s ahead by 350 delegates.
Superdelegates can’t give Hillary the nomination if she keeps losing by landslides. But if it’s reasonably close, she could overcome the gap. According to the Associated Press, Democrats have 4,763 delegates in all; to win the nomination, you need 2,382. About 15 percent -- 712 -- of all of the delegates are “superdelegates.”
More background:
Q: Who gets to be a Superdelegate?
A: Every Democratic member of Congress, House and Senate, is a Superdelegate (240 total). Every Democratic governor is a Superdelegate (20 total). Certain “distinguished party leaders,” 20 in all, are given Superdelegate status. And finally, the Democratic National Committee names an additional 432 Superdelegates -- an honor that typically goes to mayors, chairs and vice-chairs of the state party, and other dignitaries.
Q: So they have way more importance than an ordinary voter?
A: Oh yeah. In 2008, each Superdelegate had about as much clout as 10,000 voters. It will be roughly the same in 2016.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/431218/coming-dem-aggeddon[/color]
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Don: Got here thru God, Guns and Guts, I speak John Wayne, Johnny Cash and John Deere; this make ME: Christian, Conservative, Capitalist, Constitutionalist...