65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.

  • Shadywack@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Two things I’d love to see. Eliminating the electoral college and then getting rid of superdelegates. Two fundamentally anti-democratic concepts.

    • aidan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Well superdelegates aren’t exactly something the government can legislate away because they’re just an internal thing of the DNC.

    • kirklennon@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Under the 2018 rules, in the Democratic National Convention superdelegates can’t participate in the first vote and can participate only in a contested convention. Seems reasonable to me.

      Wikipedia also reminded me about this little bit of Bernie hypocrisy that I’d forgotten about: “Sanders initially said that the candidate with the majority of pledged delegates should be the nominee; in May 2016, after falling behind in the elected delegate count, he shifted, pushed for a contested convention and arguing that, ‘The responsibility that superdelegates have is to decide what is best for this country and what is best for the Democratic Party.’” Talk about unprincipled political opportunist.

      • Shadywack@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I can disagree with something Bernie said, but still be a huge supporter of his for his many other things I fully agree with. I maintain that superdelegates being in place to deal with a contested convention is still a bad thing and undemocratic. The real unhelpful part was when the DNC chair stated that it can also quell unintended grassroots efforts. I thought grassroots efforts were an example of a good thing about democracy, not a bad one.

        • kirklennon@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Bernie Sanders is emphatically not a Democrat and doesn’t want to do any of the work of building or supporting the party, but when he decides to run for president, he suddenly wants the party’s money and infrastructure, only to abandon the party ASAP after the election. He may be fine as a senator, but as a presidential candidate, he’s just so utterly loathsome. He’s got major entitled old white man syndrome and it makes me lose absolutely all respect for him.

          If you’re on to a contested convention, you can’t directly reflect the will of the primary voters in the first place (because they didn’t pick a winner) so I can’t really find any reason to object to superdelegates, most of whom are elected Democrats and already literally representing their constituents in Congress, etc.