Exclusive: Democratic “super-delegates” – hundreds of party insiders – tilted the presidential race to Hillary Clinton though not chosen by voters, an undemocratic idea that was never intended, says Spencer Oliver who was there at the creation.
By Spencer Oliver
The issue of the Democratic Party’s “super-delegates” threatens to divide the Democratic Party at the Philadelphia convention as Sen. Bernie Sanders argues that the automatic vote given these party leaders made the race undemocratic because they did not compete in the primaries and caucuses and broke heavily and early in favor of Hillary Clinton.
And Sanders has a point. I was there at the creation of this party feature and I can attest that the idea of “super-delegates” making up around 15 percent of the voting delegates – and thus holding a powerful influence over the selection process – was never what was intended.
Bernie Sanders supporters rally in Washington D.C. on June 9, 2016. (Photo credit: Chelsea Gilmour)
The original thinking was that a relative handful of state party chairs who had to remain neutral while setting up the primaries and caucuses would still get to go to the conventions. However, the numbers of “super-delegates” kept expanding and expanding as other party leaders lobbied to be included among those not having to compete in the delegate-selection process.
The “super-delegate” system was born in the wake of Democratic Party efforts after the 1968 convention to make the presidential selection process more open and democratic. I was involved in the work of all the reform commissions as the administrative assistant to Democratic National Committee Chair in 1966, later as President of the National Young Democrats, and subsequently as the founding Executive Director of the Association of State Democratic Chairs.
Named for their various leaders, these reform efforts were called the Wagner, McGovern, Fraser, O’Hara and Sanford Commissions, which made their reform recommendations to the DNC. All were tasked with making our party more open, more transparent, more inclusive, more democratic, and ultimately more successful in attracting the broad support of America’s diverse population. In other words, the idea was to put more power in the hands of rank-and-file Democrats.
This represented a major reform from the 1960s when party bosses like Carmine DeSapio in New York, powerful Governors like David Lawrence in Pennsylvania and Mike DiSalle in Ohio, and legendary Mayors like Richard Daley in Chicago dominated the Democratic conventions and had an outsized role in picking the Democratic presidential nominee.
The reform commissions were a response to that unpopular and highly criticized system. The Mississippi Freedom Party at the Atlantic City convention in 1964 and the anti-war protesters in Chicago in 1968 made the reform inevitable and certainly necessary.
Reforms and Consequence
The reforms brought American citizens much more extensively into the process of choosing the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer. The reforms also required State Democratic Chairs to be neutral as they organized their states’ primary and caucus systems. However, that meant the state chairs could not be elected to attend the party conventions as delegates committed to one candidate or the other.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confronts Sen. Bernie Sanders in Democratic presidential debate on Jan. 17, 2016.
So, the State Democratic Chairs proposed the idea of so-called “super-delegates” in the early 1970s, arguing that they should be automatic delegates because the reforms called for by the Wagner Commission and the DNC would otherwise exclude them from participation in the conventions. The DNC bought that argument. After all, they would be a relatively small number of delegates.
But then the governors wanted the same privilege, followed by congressional leaders and then the DNC members themselves. This expanding group now constitutes nearly 30 percent of the 2,383 delegates needed for nomination, significantly diluting the strength of the pledged delegates elected in primaries and caucuses.
Along the way, the “super-delegates” seem to have forgotten why they are there — and how they got there — in the first place.
On Feb. 12, 2016, when DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was asked on CNN whether the existence of “super-delegates” might give the impression to regular voters that the process was rigged, she answered: “Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grass-roots activists. We … want to give every opportunity to grass-roots activists and diverse committed Democrats to be able to participate, attend and be a delegate at the convention. And so we separate out those unpledged delegates to make sure that there isn’t competition between them.”
But “super-delegates” really were an unintended outgrowth of the reform process and indeed fly in the face of the reform goals, which were to extend to the average voter the power to select the party’s nominee. By contrast, the “super-delegates” are given the power to vote for the nominee simply because they occupy – or in some cases occupied years ago – positions that entitle them to vote without having to earn that privilege by participating in the primaries or caucuses. Is this fair? Is this democratic?
What’s Good for Kazakhstan…
I am reminded of my past experience as secretary general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s parliamentary assembly in organizing the election observation mission to the first elections in Kazakhstan in 1994 when we were trying to encourage the former Soviet republics to transition toward democracy.
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaking to one of his large crowds of supporters. (Photo credit: Sanders campaign)
The Kazakhs were trying to move in that direction, but they adopted an election law that allowed the President to appoint 25 percent of the parliament. For that reason, we declared that the election was clearly unfair. The Kazakhs were mortified and internationally embarrassed. They later changed the law and – although democracy has not yet blossomed in that part of the world – such non-electoral legislative appointments have disappeared throughout the area. Yet, a similar rule exists in the Democratic Party of the United States of America.
I am not arguing that our party leaders should not attend the Philadelphia convention. They should be on the floor, entitled to speak, to lobby, to advocate and to impart their wisdom and experience to their fellow delegates. They have certainly earned that right. But they should not have the right to vote for the Democratic Party’s choice for president and vice president.
That “super-delegates” would hold such power over the selection process was never the intent of the party’s reforms and indeed goes against the goals of those reforms, which have largely succeeded in drawing citizens more directly into the process while also broadening the Democratic Party’s tent to include minorities, women, unions, young people, LGBT – just about every component needed for electoral victory.
This divisive issue of “super-delegates” can be easily resolved. The party leaders, i.e., the “super-delegates” themselves and – most importantly – our members of Congress and governors, should make the “super-delegates” non-voting delegates, with all the convention privileges and honors they deserve, except the right to vote on the nomination. The DNC could even do this by meeting the day before the convention and amending the party’s rules to correct this democratic deficit in our system.
Spencer Oliver recently retired as Secretary General of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. He previously served for eight years as a senior official at the DNC. And for more than twenty years on Capitol Hill, concluding as Chief Counsel of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The polls continue to show a Saunders beating Trump by 6 to 14 points, while Clinton is running neck and neck with Trump. If the Democrats nominate Clinton, they will give the White House to the Republicans, as they did in 2000 when Al Gore won the election, signalling again their preference for a Republican President rather than a popular and progressive Democrat.
The party is likely to get their own way in the long run regardless. Here in the UK, the process is that the PM and PM for the opposition (think presidential candidates) are voted for by members of their own party. Anyone in the general public can become a member of a political party by signing up online for a small fee. Jeremy Corbyn was recently selected by this process, a left wing back bencher sympathtic to the working classes, opposed to war (especially nuclear armament) and an advocate for all things generally fair. His now middle center/right party, formerly leftist (until Blair reformed the party as a right wing alternative ‘New Labour’) then set about to ridicule and undermine him, almost tearing the party apart. Such is the power of the neo-liberal lobby that even when a large majority of the general public seek representation by a leftist candidate, the system does its best to reject what it interprets as a cancor.
OK, I’ll buy that — the remedy that is — although that is not quite the story that many of us have heard about how and why the super-delegates were created, and that is available at various places on the internet. It does, however, square with what we know of human nature, and with Lord Acton’s remark on the corrupting influence of power.
Between Super delegates and Pay to Play the people have been tossed out of the voting process.
The Orlando shootings knocked the headline of Hillary putting a Hedge Fund manager in a top security position after his
contributions to the Clinton foundation. The media dropped it with no explanation from Hillary.
Hillary’s daughter marries the son of a Hedge fund manager.
No one thinks she should release her Goldman Sachs speeches?
This is who the Super Delegates think we deserve for President?
This is who the democratic voters want?
This discussion is not about Hillary.
“broadening the Democratic Party’s tent to include minorities, women, unions, young people, LGBT – just about every component needed for electoral victory.”
Add to that list Wall Street, Military Industrial Complex, Health Insurance Providers, Pharmaceutical Corporations, GMO Agriculture, Hedge Fund Speculators, and any foreign nation willing to contribute to the Clinton Foundation.
I thought along time ago, how the Democratic Party should be split in two. Back in the 60’s it was the Dixiecrates against the new minority’s and to some degree labor. Now that the Dixiecrates have turned Republican, it is the people of the commons up against the big money interest. Once again this one party under a two party system just isn’t covering all of the bases needed to have good representation for all. Somebody always loses, and the divide is to big.
Hm. “The “super-delegate” system was born in the wake of Democratic Party efforts after the 1968 convention to make the presidential selection process more open and democratic. ”
I do like this article! It does help to put things into a historical perspective. Sadly, to believe the quote above, is to think that allowing fingers on the scale, by anyone, would not be coopted by power and is a bit naive. Of course, it is easy to see this in retrospect. So, now, we’ve allowed the superdelegate system to grow into this beast; how do we put this genius idea back in the bottle and find better alternatives? I sincerely doubt there is much merit (in their eyes) to being a super and having no voting voice in the nomination process.
There are so many ways that the DNC has abused their privilege in this current primary, I am at a loss to explain how they would somehow find the moral wherewithal to do anything particularly democratic. They’ve broken their trust with a good number of long time Democrats. Once broken, this may be impossible to repair, especially given the hubris of the current presumptive nominee and the DNC in their treatment of Sanders’ supporters.
I am at a loss to explain how they would somehow find the moral wherewithal to do anything particularly democratic.
In politics, as in most businesses, morality is not a factor in decision-making. A common policy among voters is “he/she may be a crook, but he/she is our crook.”
O.K, I chose a word that is too loaded “morality.”
The point I really would like to make is that a voting process, devoid of utility for the majority of constituents, is pretty useless in a democratic sense. Our present method only serves to further the goals of the establishment — a greater cog in a voting scheme. The method we should be using, would be one that is actually democratic in that it represents humans, not some construct and certainly not a system that serves itself alone through such a byzantine network. Which is the way I view the continued development of the super delegate fiasco. Right now, for no very good reason, every layer involved decreases the resolution of accurate measure of the initial election results. If we had a simplified, presumably less corruptible process that allowed our electorate to vote in our own interests as a majority, even in opposition to the elite and corporations, one could hope that a degree of concern for “humanity” would be maintained, rather than the present situation of a system divesting itself of all responsibility for the well-being of constituents.
It wasn’t all a celebration with bells and whistles, back in 1968. I remember an older guy who was a Democratic Ward Chairman, and a rebellious socialist Union Labor advocate. Even back then, people such as this old guy I once knew, was having lots of problems with the vetting, and nominating process that the Democrat’s had. He hated the Electoral College, and anything outside of a one vote nomination, in his mind was just leaving the door open for some capitalist clown to pervert our democracy process. He didn’t like the Southern Dixiecrat’s because of their being okay with the ‘right to work’ state, because he knew that was just a clever way to beat up the unions. So, not everyone back then was that okay with the process, and there were those who knew that this Super-delegate idea, was just plain loco. Only the very naive would have believed that the Super-delegate vote was not corruptible. Hey, that’s what politics is all about…right?
Actually the quoted sentence in deceptively worded. Superdelegates were actually created in the wake of the 1980 election when Ted Kennedy tried to commit party suicide for no reason he or anyone else could explain. Among the many factors that defeated Carter, Kennedy may have been the most decisive.
This article is one of several from the perspective that “I know because I was there.” But this witness strangely does not even mention the Hunt Commission which recommended Superdelegates when adopted in 1982. This article is an interesting contribution, but should be taken with a grain of salt.
It is questionable that the rules were changed just because officials wanted to attend the convention. That may have been a consideration in the recollection of this observer who may not have had access to the decisionmakers, But the principal argument was that these officials as professionals would keep their eye on the ball of winning elections, when others might go after a will o the wisp like Kennedy and down to defeat. Unfortunately, if this was a good idea at the time, Superdelegates were created just as the corruption of Buckley was washing over the whole political system. The problem with Superdelegates today is that they are immersed in a systemically corrupt system- as corrupt as Kazakhstan. If they were not, they would not be so obviously undemocratic compared to the citizen delegates who, as a product of a more direct form of democracy, are not systemically corrupt.
I am sadden and disgusted by the cynical comments made by so many.
Our system is not corrupt just because your guy lost. Grieve and get over it.
NO, not every politician is corrupt. That is a completely FALSE statement.
People saying this are the same people who talk trash about their spouses yet stay married. it is just whining to justify their own bad choices and inability to change it.
Many calling politician corrupt actually could not face the scrutiny of the public eye, yet hold politicians to a ‘perfect’ standard.
It is people who do not vote that are the issue. Unless you vote in EVERY single election, small or large, then you are THE issue. If you gave up, you are the problem.
Stop trash talking and work to fix the system. It is a lifetime war of hard work to be fought, not a one time battle won by one candidate being nominated.
Life just does not work that way.
The only industry mentioned in the Constitution is a FREE press. To inform, advocate and provide our citizens with information to make informed decisions re: our government…WE don’t have a FAIR or FREE press, we have a corporate owned media that is as unconstitutional as it can be. Even NPR has been hacked by the oligharchs. MSNBC and NBC owners are invested in fracking. Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Lawerence Odonald and that vile republican Dodd an Matthews…have absolutely LIED to the American people…THEY knowingly, willfully and with intent to defraud us…coronated Hilary Clinton the night before the Ca. election. They have dismissed Bernie, called him names they knew would offend the older generation….How we stop the corporate media is the $64,000 question.
Exactly right, Liz. there is no democratic path left now but the force of the people. While constitutional amendments could restrict funding of elections and mass media to registered and limited individual contributions, there is no way to get such amendments because those tools of democracy are already controlled by money. It would actually be encouraging to see terminally ill suicide bombers taking out mass media facilities, claiming allegiance to right wing extremist groups.
This time the good people in the US are going to be screwed, again by not having anyone that will stand up for the average Joe. Promises were made by Obama and he turned out just like all the others before him. This time the ‘system’ is even more rigged than ever, like HRC was “destined” to be leader. So now with war drums louder than ever,(never mind there’s no mention of massive military buildups over the world), we are faced with a choice of really, really bad and disastrous and I’m not sure which one fits which categorie. Yes the system is ‘rigged’, Bernie didn’t have a chance but maybe the youth will find a way to build on his ‘revolution’ to get out of the disaster looming in the very near future.
This time the good people in the US are going to be screwed,…
They get screwed every time because they allow themselves to be shafted over and over again. To call the US a nation of sheep is an insult to sheep.
Kudos to the author for submitting this much needed article which explains how the duper-delegates came into being, and how they came to be anti-democratic. Oliver’s solution should be implemented. That said, the two-party American system is a crap system in so many other ways that a massive revolution or complete changing of the election and representation system is needed. The 2 parties are, like Chomsky and many others have said repeatedly, two sides of the same coin, that being big business. Unlimited bankrolling of candidates by corporations and billionaires, with candidates like Trump and Clinton who are millionaires, and a congress full of millionaires gives the impression that the USA is not a democracy but rather an oligarchy owned and operated by and for billionaire 1 percenters. Which in fact it is.
Impression?
The Democratic (sic) Party has a long history of corruption, so it is no surprise that any attempt to clean up the party’s act would be rendered into continuing business as usual. As Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida and Israel) indicated the party leaders weren’t about to let the riff-raff in on the decision-making.
According to a Bloomberg article published in our local rag, Republican delegates can also override the people’s choice. Very undemocratic, but if the GOP can come up with a lesser evil, perhaps we can turn a blind eye to this shenanigan.
Thanks for the highly informative essay.
I can’t remember where I read (or heard, maybe a podcast at John Batchelor Show?) that Sanders is trying to get concessions from Hillary Clinton and the DNC on structural reforms that will allow a wider set of voices within the party. I wish I could remember where I read that. Maybe here in comments? There is so much to keep track of, I forget sometimes LOL.
Bernie Sanders said this himself just last night. Frankly, if Bernie’s not the nominee, his followers should vote for Jill Stein who agrees with policies of Bernie and Elizabeth Warren but is actually better than they on foreign policy. Hillary and Donald will bomb all over the place…think Iran and Russia for starters. Stein won’t. She’s the best one running and will be on the ballot under the Green Party. We don’t have to choose a “lesser of two evils.”
Or – perhaps there needs to be a write-in effort for Bernie, based on how the Conventions works out. He could make Jill Stein his VP and really solidify the Independents and Greens, making the new party that has been getting talked about: Progressive Party. I think we are ready for this change, would you agree?
I haven’t heard that Bernie is suggesting we vote for Stein, an excellent candidate in my book, and more progressive than Bernie. She has the guts and the courage to call out the election fraud…thousands of Bernie supporters are asking Bernie to run on the Green ticket…but my problem is does the Greens have ballot status in all the states? Others want Bernie to run as an independent over 200,000 have signed that petition…Again, the independents have NO ballot status…so that’s out. Where do we go from here…if indeed we are going to keep the movement alive Bernie started…we must fight back. If Bernie is not the nominee, we have 8 yrs of crooked Hilary Clinton a spokesperson for the 1%. She will assure the OLIGHARCHS control our government, subverting more of our civil rights, and she is an admitted 100% Zionist, meaning Israel will bomb Iran with her blessing. When they do, WW3 will break out…we the citizens of the US will never get affordable single payer health care, never get college tuition, never increase social security for our elderly leaving in poverty, and never will we create 13M jobs dealing with our infrastructure…all our $$$$ will continue going to the billionaires and to the military industrial complex.
Read this, I hope it helps you;
http://www.jill2016.com/ballotaccess
Jill needs our help. “IF IT’s Hill, I’m with Jill”
Many of Sanders made up their mind several months ago, that when Clinton and her DNC oligarchy thieves cheat take the crown for Clinton, they will write Sanders in on their ballots. But I personally believe that Hillary Must be openly exposed and indicted and Sander’s won’t loose.
Here is the link to the speech Bernie gave yesterday afternoon — he gives here detailed thoughts on reform of the Democratic platform/party
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzHSNjctOCk
Susan Raikes Sugar,
Why does a lifetime independent think he gets any say in the reformation of a party that he did nothing for and actively sought to destroy? He has openly despised the party all these years, going off rogue and working against them when it favored him.
He only caucused with them when they were the majority to get committee seats. That is opportunistic, not collaborative or cooperative.
Why should a defacto ‘enemy’ of the DNC and it’s members be given anything in the changes? How is this obvious issue ignore so easily by so many.
Just because he garnered 40% of the dem party primaries, which is about 20% of the total when the GOP voters are included? He is not any majority in any scenario. that is not democracy that a minority member gets such power.
Yes, Bernie is getting more consideration than any other loser of a Primary contest.
Hillary and the DNC has bent over backwards to give him INPUT into the discussion. Traditionally the winner sets the platform and the delegates either vote it up or down, with minor changes. Bernie is getting major input.
He does not get to take over the party though because of this, yet his supporters think in a democracy the loser gets to set the policy. Wow! That sounds just like the Minority GOP in the Senate, roadblocking and holding up the MAJORITY dems from doing their jobs.
Sadly these Bernie supporters are more like the GOP than Dems when it comes to their demands…..
I like these sorts of “how things work” articles. It must have been a fascinating–and disheartening, at times–experience working as Chief Counsel of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
I am not a partisan player and don’t feel comfortable with party politics (I haven’t the temperament for it), but can some structural changes help to create a more representative non-militarist voice within the Democratic Party? I suppose it can, but the players within the military industrial congressional complex are always working to chip away at the realist, peace, or non-militarist factions.
Very interesting. Thank you.
In March 2015 the Clinton camp, DNC and state party chairs met to create the Hilary Victory Fund where they would collect over $l billion from corporations and their lobbyists. At that meeting, Clinton told them there would be enough MONEY to fund all the super delegates running for election IF they would become her super delegate. That’s were the unethical rigging of the election began. In April she filed content she had the election wrapped up. Sanders entered the race which blew a whole their the establishment plan to coronate Hilary. Since then the DNC, state party chairs beginning rigging States one by one. They committed voter fraud, voter suppression, permitted KNOWN faulty voting machines to flip the votes by 3% to assure a win for Hilary.
OVER 5 Million votes still not counted in California….non partisan election protection groups have filed a lawsuit in federal court to demand ALL votes be counted. The State Party in Ca. not only will willful intent to defraud voters in California…those who had changed their ballot status to democrat, were never put in the database of the Board of Election in California (Note the same fat cat who rigged Ohio in 2004 for Bush, is now the party head in California..Mr. Yu, is a known voter suppression character. GOOGLE him.
In every state, including my own Delaware it was rigged. I went to vote in Sussex County the southern county in Delaware and when I pressed the button for Bernie…it registered Hilary…I tried three times, Finally I called the poll worker and said, LOOK I am pushing the button for Bernie but the Hilary button is voting FOR ME. The poll worker was incensed, told me, Lady you already voted…I argued I want another machine….I made quite a stink. Finally they told me to leave. I immediately called the Board of Elections and Common Cause and reported it. Turns out Common Cause had received many, many calls reporting the same thing.
This election was not only rigged from the git go…we are living through a political coup de tat….backed up by a corporate media who did everything ;possible to rig the election…HOW can we have a Convention to coronate one of the most corrupt democrats in the history of this country. We need FEDERAL lawsuits filed in every state where voter suppression and corruption occurred. There is no doubt that if all the votes in Ca were counted, Sanders would win. How is it possible Sanders had 20,000, 15,000 etc people come out for him, while Hilary could get maybe 300 or 400?
The establishment demoRATS and their corporate owned networks PUSHED this election into total fraud. Do not accept it…do not back down if your a Bernie Supporter…there is a reason Bernie has not endorsed Hilary, he knows it was a fraud…but does he have the will and the backbone to call out the national fraud…has Bernie Sanders been “TOLD to back down or else”?
Thanks for posting your experience in the election booth. Most of us are aware that fraud was everywhere, but still, I had no idea it was so blatant (and vicious). I hope you have written this up for public consumption and notified Arnebeck? (think that’s the guy who is filing charges of election fraud… — I will come back here with complete names and info.) Here is a link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtF7HUgiO_k
But none of us should give up hope. Here are two links, one by H.A. Goodman who insists that Hillary is up for criminal indictments and the likelihood of her gliding past this is almost nil. The other link is to a visual of Bernie and Obama walking out of the White House after their chat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?…
This is what I come up with: Why would any sitting President want to hand the final comments on his tenure as President to history books that will link him to a criminal personality like Hillary Clinton? Goodman makes a very strong case for why the establishment has little choice but to end Hillary’s obscene presumptions of entitlement. And now there are all sorts of documentaries popping up on the internet about Russian hackers into the DNC (and elsewhere). This takes us to Robert Parry’s previous posts on MH17. We can now better understand why Russia would have a serious interest in seeing that fascist warmonger Clinton is not elected President of the United States.
Was it here on this site that someone posted a link asking us to imagine Victoria “f-ck the EU” Nuland as Secretary of State under Clinton? They’re in the same mold. Staring at that possibility all I could think was: Get down on your knees and pray.
Total agreement. Our “democracy” is a total scam. It’s an oligarchy – for and by the RICH. Super delegates are just another corrupt scam. Congratulations DEMOCRATIC PARTY. You’ve lost MY votes FOREVER. Hillary is just ANOTHER war-monger, blindly supporting Israel’s occupation and supplying weapons to the ENTIRE world, which terrorists eventually get a hold of and use against us.
Please stop making this an attack on Hillary and stop with the anti-Hillary BS.
If you can’t discuss the super delegates without some conspiracy theory, please don’t comment. Reasonable, adult conversation can stick to the subject which is the super delegates created over 30 years ago, not the current candidate.
The super delegates are working as designed. To keep out the rogue element who misrepresents the standards and goal of the party, as decided by the majority.
This is a nonexistent issue in this case, it is only being beaten to death because of sore losers. Hillary was the majority winner in every scenario, so the super delegates are correct to support her. They did not swing anything, even without them she got the majority.
Hillary got the MAJORITY and that is DEMOCRACY and DEMOCRATIC in every way. Please stop the creation of friction with these BS arguments.
Part of being mature is understanding how to deal with loss and moving on without trying to burn everything else to the ground as a poor sport loser.
Suppositions about superdelegates on a never having occurred scenario is just a waste of time and definitely not impetus to make major changes that protect the Democratic party from rogue, non democratic elements.
What has to be understood is that political parties are just that – private parties. They are free to chose whoever they want for any office and are not beholden to the public. They can use any means they like to make their choices and there is no legal requirement that they listen to the public in making them. They can ask for your support and loyalty, but they have no legal requirement or obligation to reciprocate and they can do as they damned well please.
Why more people don’t understand this is beyond me. I cannot understand how people can be loyal to a political party when that loyalty is not reciprocated. People need to start asking “what has my political party done for me”? In truth, 99% of Americans will find the answer is nothing.
Bear in mind, there is no provision in the Constitution for political parties and there’s damned little legislation governing them. On top of that, the Supreme Court has ravaged what little restraint our government ever had over them.