The current Democratic delegate count dictates that Hillary has 748 delegates and Bernie has 542 delegates. That’s right, Hillary is not in the thousands yet. If you are like me and are pondering how Hillary can be ahead by both a large margin and a small one, look no further.
When a state caucuses for the Democratic primaries, registered Democratic voters cast their votes for their desired candidate and the delegates are split up proportionally between each candidate depending on how many votes they receive. Delegates are awarded proportionally. So, why is there a big disparity between Hillary’s reported delegates and her actual delegate count?
This is where superdelegates come in. Superdelegates are votes cast by ranking Democratic Party members. Sitting governors, senators, leaders of the party; the Democratic Party selects elite party members to vote as superdelegates. They can cast their vote for any candidate at any time and are not tied down to any candidate at all. The superdelegate count also does not matter until all the regular delegate votes have been cast. Big picture, superdelegates consist largely of people we voted into office. In a perfectly democratic system their superdelegate vote would accurately represent the popular vote of the area they are from.
The media is including the superdelegate count with the delegate count. This is where politics gets funky and people start to question the legitimacy of presidential elections.
Rule 12 J of the Democratic Party rules states that "Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them." So if Hillary is typically ahead in the polls, but not by a huge margin, why are the superdelegates ignoring the partial-delegate vote for Bernie and pledging to the Clinton campaign so early? Should there not be a proportional split of superdelegates to delegates? The superdelegates are supposed to represent the people who voted them into office and if those people are voting for Bernie, they should too. Misrepresentation of the public is a fundamental breech of a democratic democracy is it not?
Also why is the media reporting the delegate count as combined? I am no Sherlock Holmes but anyone willing to read about how a Democratic primary works can see that the media is portraying the election to suggest that Bernie has absolutely no hope of competing with Hillary. People who actively look into Bernie Sanders are likely to start feeling the Bern. But why would they if the Clinton campaign is perceived nationally as a juggernaut weathering all national scrutiny and maintaining a lead in the polls.
The media is supposed to interpret the politics and give us, the public, an intelligent summary so that we can make informed political decisions. In our form of democracy the media is the link from the women and men leading this country to the voters who got them there. It is clear to see that most mainstream media sources out there are biased. This is a challenge to anyone willing to exercise their right to vote responsibly and do some homework, think about the things they read, and figure out how much of it is true and what portions are obscured and clouded. As the generation with the most access to a huge wealth of instant information, we need to be the best generation at interpreting that information and applying it to the non-digital world. Hop to it. Go Sanders.
