Did Democratic Superdelegates Write Their Own Epitaph?

That's a question I tweeted over the weekend, but would like to explore a bit more. The question finds its root in some of the comments Elaine Kamarck made at this weekend's Democratic Change Commission meeting (from ABCNews):

Touching on what may prove to be one of the more contentious issues considered by the DNC, one presenter, Democratic Party activist and Harvard University lecturer and former superdelegate Elaine Kamarck, suggested that it may be time to completely eliminate superdelegates since most of those party leaders clearly determined their role in 2008 to be one of ratifying the decision made by voters in primaries and caucuses.

"We can probably let go of the superdelegates," said Kamarck.

"Their deliberative role," she added, "has in fact been supplanted by a very very public process."

I hadn't really given this much thought before, but by following the will of the people (voting the way their constituents did), most superdelegates actually undermined their original purpose. The reason superdelegates came into being in the interim period between the 1980 and 1984 elections was to allow the party establishment an increased voice in the nomination process (something they saw as having diminished in the post-McGovern-Fraser reform era). Make no mistake, that is code for giving the party the opportunity to put a check on the decision of the people's choice. And no, that's not necessarily a bad thing. For the Democratic Party that was a strategic decision based on the prevailing conventional wisdom* of the time that primary voters are typically more extreme (or at least further to the left or right) than general election voters. It was a basic electability argument.

Regardless, superdelegates have basically served to ratify the choice of primary voters since 1984. But they operated in the shadows -- in virtual anonymity -- not triggering any controversy until their role appeared consequential to the outcome of the 2008 Democratic nomination. Their role never changed, though -- not the intended role, at least. Technically, superdelegates are/were still unpledged delegates. However, by very visibly coming out in favor of the candidates their constituents voted for in the primaries and caucuses, they (or most of the superdelegates) completely undermined their initial purpose.

And this was a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. There was no exit strategy where the superdelegate system was going to emerge unchanged. Either the superdelegates were going to vote with their constituency and risk countering their intended purpose or they were going to vote against their constituents and run the risk of ripping the party in two. [Yes, there are a series of gradations in between, but one of those narratives would have emerged as the dominant theme at some point.] Politically, they made the right move for many reasons. [Not dividing the party and their own re-election prospects would have damaged in the case of the office-holding superdelegates were chief among those reasons.] In the process, though, the role of the superdelegate has likely been rewritten.

The Hunt Commission initially called for superdelegates to comprise approximately 30% of total delegates, but that number was whittled down to 14% by the time the 1984 cycle rolled around. Ever since then, there has been what Democratic Change Commission member Suzi LeVine cleverly called a "superdelegate creep" with that percentage rising as time went on. By 2008 superdelegates made up about 20% of the total number of Democratic convention delegates.

Saying that superdelegates wrote their own epitaph with their actions in 2008 is probably a bit of an overstatement. Will they be eliminated? No, because the Democratic Change Commission membership is about one-third superdelegate and the group the DCC will make recommendations to -- the Rules and Bylaws Committee -- is made up of DNC members who were also superdelegates. They won't be eliminated, but their voice in the nomination process -- the voice of the party establishment superdelegates were created to protect -- will likely be significantly diminished for the 2012 cycle and beyond.

We'll find out a little bit more about how much when the Democratic Change Commission reconvenes in late August.

*This is still being debated in various ways within the political science discipline. Early books by Crotty and Jackson (Presidential Primaries and Nominations - 1985), Marshall (Presidential Primaries in a Reform Age - 1981), Lengle (Representation and Presidential Primaries: The Democratic Party in the Post-Reform Era - 1981), Polsby (Consequences of Party Reform - 1983) and more recent articles (highlighted by McCann 1995) all describe varying levels of differentiation between primary voters and (same party) general election voters while Norrander (1989) and Geer (1988), among others, offer evidence against the ideological extremism argument.


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State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (6/30/09)

Status quo.

That's all you can really say. As June closes on the New Jersey race for governor, the best you can do to sum things up is to say that Chris Christie won the month. The Republican candidate for governor led in all four post-(June 3)primary polls and cleared the 50% barrier in each of them. If Christie maintains that level of support throughout the summer, it won't matter if Corzine gains the support of all the undecideds down, the incumbent governor will still come up short in his bid for re-election. Of course, there's a long way to go and the campaign has yet to heat up (as it will in the fall). And the Democratic National Committee has entered the fray by trying to repackage the "McCain has a short fuse" narrative for New Jersey voters with Christie as the principal. That's clever, sure, and it is certainly better coming from the DNC than from Corzine at this point, but countering the "Corzine's to blame for the state of things in New Jersey" will be a tough proposition.

Long story short, though, how does the new poll from Public Policy Polling (pdf) affect FHQ's graduated weighted average for the race? As was mentioned already, Christie is still hovering over the 50% barrier in polling, but lost in that is the fact that Corzine is at his highest level of support in any head-to-head poll (against Christie) for all of 2009. It is a high water mark for Corzine, but the governor continues to trail his challenger by about ten points. In other words, Corzine is rising (ever so slightly), but that gain is coming from undecideds and not at the expense of Christie. Again, that won't be a means to an end here. Corzine won't win this race if all he's doing is securing undecideds while taking nothing away from Christie. There is no evidence to suggest that Corzine is pulling in undecideds at any great clip -- it could just be statistical noise between polls at this point. If, though (and this is a big if), Corzine were able to make substantial gains among those undecideds (something that likely will not happen until the fall), then that closing polling margin may put pressure on the "weaker" Christie supporters (I'll define that as independents for the moment.) to rethink things.

That, as I said though, is a big if. Where things stand entering July is that Christie maintains a substantial lead in a potentially anti-incumbent race and that Corzine's chances may hinge on making the race about Christie and not himself. That's easier said than done, though.


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Last night I linked to Democratic Change Commission member, Suzi LeVine's, blog. She updated her already detailed account of the events that transpired yesterday with insights into the discussions (and Q&A) around each of the presentations. This is THE site (so far) to track the DCC's progress from an inside perspective.

The presentations (and comments)...

• Overview of the Change Commissions Issues

• History of Modern Day Democratic Presidential Nominations

• Presentation on Caucus Systems

• Interests & Goals of the Party, Presidential Candidates & Voters

• Unpledged Delegates (superdelegates)

This is great stuff (...that I'm sure I'm bound to come back to later).


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Mark your calendars folks. Frank Leone, over at DemRulz, who was at yesterday's first Democratic Change Commission meeting, has the dates for remaining three meetings of the commission. Recall that the resolution that created the commission called for the group to make recommendations to the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee by January 1, 2010. All of the following meetings are scheduled accordingly.

August 29 (meeting open to public comment)

October 24

December 5

The latter two are meetings to discuss and decide on proposals for recommendation.


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The 2012 Presidential Candidates on Twitter (June 2009)

Last month FHQ (or @FHQ*) joined the ranks of the Twitter nation in order to track not only how the prospective Republican presidential candidates use the service, but to gauge each person's follower level throughout the invisible primary period.

[Click to Enlarge]

The pattern in June looks pretty much as it did a month ago. To put it mildly, Newt Gingrich has either a tremendous head start or just a plain ol' lead over the other potential candidates. That advantage continues to dwarf the others to the point that the differences between them is hardly noticeable. [To add in the likely Democratic nominee, President Obama currently have more than 1.5 million followers.] Before I omit Gingrich in order to better examine the other candidates' followings, let me make a couple of caveats.

First, what you're seeing is a division in the data that isn't necessarily something that provides and apples to apples comparison. The blue portion of the bars is the follower level each candidate had from the creation of their Twitter account through the end of May (Well, May 27 to be exact.) while the red segment represents what the candidates gained since the original data was collected last month. No, that's not directly comparable, but as we continue to add in subsequent data in the months ahead, this start-up issue will lessen to some extent.

Secondly, what's to be done with John Ensign and Mark Sanford? I'm going to leave them both in for the time being despite the fact that their White House aspirations have been extinguished. However, if anything, it will be interesting to see how the two scandal-plagued pols, use Twitter in the continuing aftermath of their respective revelations. That's future omissions, but what about additions? I looked for a Mitch Daniels Twitter feed but the Indiana governor has yet to become a convert. Give it time, Hoosiers.

With that out of the way, let's look at the numbers for everyone but Gingrich, who added about 200,000 followers in June. The other three of the GOP "top four" -- Gingrich, Huckabee, Palin and Romney -- are ahead of the curve. [The top four are given that designation simply because they are the most mentioned candidates for 2012 in addition to being the ones consistently included in the admittedly scant polling on the 2012 race. The phenomenon seems to stretch to Twitter as well.] Though Romney lags behind (We'll get to why in a moment), Huckabee and Palin along with Bobby Jindal, there's still enough distance between the former Massachusetts governor and everyone else to include him in the group of candidates on the upper end of the Twitter follower distribution. Huckabee, Jindal and Romney had modest follower gains in June and Sarah Palin, like Newt Gingrich, had about a 60% increase in those following her in that same span.

[Click to Enlarge]

Of the remaining prospective candidates, no one, at this point, seems to be breaking from the pack to indicate any level of emergence. Ensign and Sanford may see increases, but it is a safe bet that those gains won't be related to folks searching them out because they're interested in the pair's White House chances.

Now, there's one factor that I alluded to last month but didn't delve into that deeply: the idea that a candidate's follower count is a function of how often the candidates are tweeting, not just interest in their presidential ambitions. Mitt Romney, for example, has an impressive list of followers for someone who is tweeting so infrequently. That may tell us something about people's interest in his potential candidacy in 2012. What about the others? Tim Pawlenty, like Romney, likely lags because the Minnesota governor isn't as frequent a tweeter as, say, Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich. The latter two tweet a lot and have a significant number of followers to show for it; each averaging over five tweets per day since they opened their Twitter accounts.

[Click to Enlarge]

Mike Huckabee is another candidate that tweets with relative regularity, but the former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate is hurt by the fact that he was an early adopter of Twitter (joining last summer). Of the rest, only Mark Sanford clears the one tweet/day barrier. But he's been pretty quiet since his "hike" last weekend.

One to watch? I'd keep an eye on John Thune. No, the support isn't there now, but with Ensign's resignation from the Republican Senate Policy Chair position and Thune's rise to that rank, the South Dakota senator has a higher profile now. Add to that Thune's new web site concerning the Sotomayor confirmation process (something FHQ tweeted), and you have an apparent increased web presence.

But I suppose we'll see in another month.

*And if you're not already following us, click here, sign up and follow. There are often items that are worth a read (and/or beyond the purview of this blog) that get a tweet.


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Wow!

Yes, this was an idea that made the rounds at the Democratic Change Commission meeting on Saturday. Commission member Suzi LeVine has an, and I can't stress this enough, awesome inside account of the events of the day. In terms of primary scheduling, she had this to say:

"From the sessions – one big point I took away was that having a single national primary day would not benefit our objectives – but that it’ll be very difficult without incentives to get the states to voluntarily change their dates, spread the map or move to a same day primary. Two ideas raised were: bonus delegates for later states and allow later states to do a winner take all strategy."

Bonus delegates obviously haven't worked. No state has moved back or stayed put as a means of gaining more delegates since Republicans started the practice in 2000. Those moves (or non-moves) have been a function of structural factors; most specifically whether a state traditionally holds its presidential primary concurrently with its primaries for state and local offices. That, very simply, has been a prohibitive factor.

But this winner-take-all idea is an interesting one. For the Democratic Party to even consider this is an acknowledgment of the sense of urgency behind reforming this process in some way, shape or form. The idea of allowing winner-take-all primaries is likely a hollow one though. The whole thing is predicated on there being a close contest coming down the stretch of a presidential nomination race. LeVine rightly points out that we don't know whether 2008 is the "new normal or a complete anomaly," but I strongly suspect it is the latter. And if that is the case and the nomination is wrapped up on Super Tuesday or soon thereafter, then what incentive is that to offer later states what they are going to get anyway: all their delegates going to the one remaining candidate? How is that an incentive?

"Here, move back and we'll make sure that your contest is winner-take-all. That way there will be some interest in your contest ... if there's still a race by that point. Otherwise, the few voters that show up to vote in your primary will vote for the one remaining viable candidate; our nominee."

That doesn't sound like much of an incentive. But let's assume that some nomination race down the road simulates 2008 all over again. In the event that there is another close nomination fight, though, a winner-take-all primary is an attractive incentive for states. That potentially makes a later state or group of later states into kingmakers.

Ah, but there's a catch: the states, in the case of primary states, have to change the primary dates in advance. And how do they know in advance which year's nomintation battle is going to be competitive, so they can begin the legislative process to change the date of the primary. One could argue that states acted in relative short order in 2007 to move their primaries in anticipation of 2008. They did, but that wasn't because the contest seemed like it was going to be close. Hillary Clinton had a sizable lead throughout 2007. States were motivated to move because they didn't want to get left behind in the way they were in 2004 after the Democrats opened their window (period of time in which all non-exempt contests can be held) to allow February contests. To go in March or later seemed like suicide at the time; something for divided state legislatures to quibble over.

So, as interesting as this idea is -- and it is something groundbreaking coming from Democrats -- it is another of those well-intentioned concepts riddled with unintended consequences.

Major hat tip to Matt at DemConWatch for tracking down LeVine's post on this matter.


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DemRulz Liveblog of Democratic Change Commission Meeting

Virginia DNC member Frank Leone is liveblogging the action from the Democratic Change Commission meeting today in Washington. You can follow along at DemRulz and also have a look at the group's agenda (There are some nice graphs in there that I'll pull out and post in a little while.) there as well.

Also, Dan Balz has a story up on Washington Post's page dealing with the 2012 nomination process tinkering that will likely appear in tomorrow's Post (Note the use of the word yesterday in reference to the meeting taking place today.). It is an interesting read. You can check it out here. Importantly, he notes that Elaine Kamarck, in her presentation on superdelegates, indicated that the time was right for their (the superdelegates) elimination.

Now, some graphics on delegate allocation from the meeting's agenda notes (These are from pdfs and that explains the graininess. However, they come to us courtesy of the Democratic National Committee, so let's grant credit where credit is due.)...

1976 Democratic Delegate Allocation

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1980 Democratic Delegate Allocation

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1984 Democratic Delegate Allocation

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1988 Democratic Delegate Allocation

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1992 Democratic Delegate Allocation

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1996 Democratic Delegate Allocation

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2000 Democratic Delegate Allocation

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2004 Democratic Delegate Allocation

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2008 Democratic Delegate Allocation

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So, what do we see here? It isn't that unlike the maps I have in the left sidebar. But instead of being couched in terms of how early the contests are (and those changes over time), these graphs show how a process that had a relatively even distribution of delegates throughout the window period in 1976 shifted to what we witnessed in 2008. Mainly, we see that 60% of the delegates were allocated in the first week of February with no other week breaking the 15% barrier. Of course, those numbers would have been even more lopsided in 2008 if Florida and Michigan had been included in the data. Those states would have pushed the delegates having been allocated by February 6 (the day after Super Tuesday) to over two-thirds and close three-quarters. That, folks, is the impact of frontloading in a nutshell.

For other posts related to the Democratic Change Commission, click here. And here's the progress thus far on the GOP side.


Hat tip to Matt at DemConWatch for the tip on Leone's coverage.


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...or has FiveThirtyEight's Ed Kilgore taken what he calls an oversimplification and applied a very narrow definition to it as means of mythbusting?

The concept in question -- the myth regarding the GOP selection of presidential nominees based on who is next in line -- certainly is a simplification, but the best theories are parsimonious: simple while being powerfully explanatory or predictive. The best way to disprove any theory is to narrowly define its concepts. All this just seems like a measurement issue to me. If you narrowly define someone's next-in-line status as simply having run before (and done reasonably well), then sure, you'll be able to find instances where that "was trumped" by having been a vice presidential candidate or having name recognition or money or grassroots support.

But this is where I differ with Kilgore. All those other factors are part of this. The theory isn't next-in-line (as I supposed it has sadly been dubbed and poorly described) so much as it is heir apparent; someone who has been there (whether as a vice president, vice presidential candidate or presidential nomination candidate), and has some name recognition, money and grassroots support because of it. And this is how I've approached this concept when I've brought it up in this space in the past; as something more broadly defined.

And I bet you're saying to yourself, "This heir apparent sounds an awful lot like a frontrunner." That's because it is. It's the same thing. And as William Mayer has pointed out time and time again, frontrunners usually win in the post-reform period (the McGovern-Fraser reforms that served as the impetus for the system of presidential nominations our country's two major parties employ). [Yes, there are exceptions to that rule as perhaps you were able to glean from the title to Mayer's article.]

Fine, but what does this have to do with the so-called next-in-line theory? Well, much of this has to do with the choices given voters when the primaries and caucuses begin anew every four years. Kilgore alludes to this in his post, referring to the "psychological assertions about the nature of Republicans as opposed to Democrats." But this next-in-line, or heir apparent or frontrunner or whatever you want to call it theory incorporates (or should) what's happening in the invisible primary period between presidential elections because a lot this has to do with what the party establishment is doing behind the scenes before the first ballot is cast in Iowa. This isn't about voters so much is it is about the rules and/or actions of the parties' elites (see Cohen, et al. -- The Party Decides -- for more on the latter).

The thing that separates Republicans from Democrats in this area is the combination of a more homogeneous base of elites and the winner-take-all rules in the delegate selection events. The Republicans just haven't had as much of a "big tent" issue among the various factions of their party as the Democrats have over the last nearly four decades. Have there been divisions at the elite level around particular candidates vying for any given Republican nomination? Yes, but they have been more muted than on the Democratic side. [Again, there are exceptions. 2008 comes to mind.] But Republican candidates who "have been there" have just been better able to take advantage of their greater number of connections to those elites (and the elites vice versa), their endorsements and the attendant financial windfall. Republican elites simply line up behind those they know, whether that means a consensus behind George W. Bush (that's how the former president fits into this) or a slim plurality for John McCain. There's a relationship there. The candidate knows he or she needs the elite level support to win the nomination and the establishment within the party needs a candidate who can get elected and push the agenda of the party.

So this isn't a question of narrowly defining "next-in-line" so much as it is about how that status works in concert (and overlaps) with other factors (like electability in McCain's case) to make Republican's who are "next-in-line" more likely to emerge as presidential nominees than Democrats in the same situation. That status, though, is the tie that binds the contested nominations of the post-reform era together on the GOP side.

What does that portend for 2012? Both Romney and Huckabee (and even a lagging Palin) have a leg up on others that will contend (or are already quietly contending) for the nomination. All three are logical heirs to the next-in-line label. If, however, the party decides, as it did in 2000, that Romney and Huckabee and Palin are dispensable in the way that Alexander and Forbes and Quayle were, the party is likely to gather around someone who has some institutional strength within the party (Dare I say Haley Barbour? Not without repercussions, I guess.).

As of right now, though, those who are next in line have the best shot at the nomination in 2012.

...unless...


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According to First Read...

*** Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’: Missing those daily superdelegate counts? The speculation about when states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan would hold their primaries/caucuses? Come on, admit it -- you miss it. Well, if you are, you can head over Saturday morning to the first meeting of the DNC’s Democratic Change Commission, which has been tasked with reforming 1) the primary calendar, 2) the number of superdelegates, and 3) the caucus system. Presiding over the meeting will be DNC chair Tim Kaine and commission co-chairs Jim Clyburn and Claire McCaskill, and there isn’t supposed to be any big news. The 37-member commission will listen to a presentation of Democratic Party presidential nominations by Rhodes Cook; a look at the superdelegates by Elaine Kamarck; and an examination of the caucus system by Organizing for America’s Mitch Stewart. This is all in the fact-gathering stage, but ask yourself this: How likely is it that this DNC would dramatically change a system that helped launch the president's campaign? Iowa and South Carolina are VERY safe. As for the superdelegate system, well that’s another story…

As I said earlier in the week, no decisions are going to be made tomorrow, but it is quite another thing to see how much listening the group will be doing tomorrow. That probably isn't the kind of action most people want. My hope? That the DNC posts the presentations as part of their coverage.

UPDATE: Oh, and C-SPAN's TV schedule is full in the morning tomorrow (when the meeting is going on), but C-SPAN2 still has some holes to fill. The former does have some spots in the afternoon to run a rebroadcast if they get some cameras out there.


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Here's an interesting topic for discussion on a Friday: What's the likelihood that any of the 22 Republican governors ever reaches the White House? Ken Rudin handicaps the odds over at NPR's Political Junkie. Let me add my take. Now that Mark Sanford has voluntarily/involuntarily withdrawn his name from 2012 consideration (and who's to say a future comeback isn't possible?), the line between those who realitically have a shot and those who don't can currently be drawn just after Rick Perry. And if that is the case, what can we make of the ordering of those top 8?

The common thread among this group (with maybe the exception of Rick Perry) is that all have been mentioned in one way, shape or form in connection with the race for the 2012 Republican nomination for president. [Of course, there is at least one person out there who sees Sanford's loss as Perry's gain in regard to 2012.] The order of that top eight, then, would be dependent upon who throws their hat in the ring in 2012 and by their subsequent performances in the primaries and caucuses to follow. Pawlenty, Palin, Jindal, Crist and Perry can't all be rising stars in terms of the presidency. Each affects the other if they all enter the race. How each finishes, then, essentially handicaps any future race for the nomination. And that affects the likelihood that those on the bottom half of the order reprise their nomination run.

Let's illustrate this with some examples. Both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee helped themselves for future runs by doing "well" in the 2008 nomination race. No one, for instance, is talking about Fred or Tommy Thompson or Sam Brownback running again in the future. [You could make the argument that Brownback is running for governor in Kansas as a means of positioning himself for another run at the presidency down the road. I'll grant you that. However, would he cut a second term as the Sunflower state's chief executive in 2016 to run or would he wait out a prospective second term and run in 2020 when he'll be 67? At least his 2008 run will be a distant memory by then.] In 2008 John Edwards was helped in a way similar to that of Romney and Huckabee because of his performance in the 2004 Democratic primaries and resultant VP nomination. Meanwhile, Bob Graham essentially wrote his own obituary for national office when his candidacy didn't take off.

The lesson is that, well, "this town ain't big enough for the [lot] of us." If all of those eight enter (and they won't) there will be winners and losers in terms of future presidential prospects.

Of course, the odds of making it to the White House on anything other than a tour stop are pretty long anyway.


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