Democracy, Now?

Is it me, or is our nominating process for the Democratic presidential candidate a giant clusterfuck? (yes, I just wanted to use the word ‘clusterfuck’).

Remember in 2000, when Gore won the popular vote but lost the election, and all of the outrage that followed? Although I have a feeling we would disagree on a lot of issues, this blogger  accurately points out the sheer hypocrisy of it all.

-  Clinton won the popular vote in N.H., but Obama and Clinton got the same number of delegates (the CNN count refered to in the blog above was premature, but is updated here)

- Clinton won the popular vote in Nevada, but Obama got more delegates

- Clinton won the popular vote in Florida, but nobody got ANY delegates.

BUT,

Despite the fact that Barack Obama has more pledged delegates than any other candidate (63 to Clinton’s 48), Hillary Clinton has the superdelegates  on her side. These mysterious super delegates (see the link for some historical context) are party operatives and elected officials who make up about 20% of all democratic delegates, and can vote for whoever they damn well please, people and primary results be dammed. In the superdelegate battle, it’s Clinton:184, Obama:95.

So what is going on here? Will the Democratic nominee win the popular vote but not win a majority of pledged delegates,  only to be saved by the preferences of an elite few. (After all, former President Bill Clinton is a super delegate himself )

I don’t think it should be winner take all (nationally as well as within each state), but a little more transparency would be nice. Certainly we can do better than the clusterfuck that exists today.