Should Super Delegates overrule the people (popular vote) ?

[Liberty Belle]

81. No, but with a couple of caveats.

If the people ever voted for someone who is the antithesis of what democratic values are, I could see a role for the party to step in. Imagine, for instance, if Trump had run as a Democrat and won the primary.

Think it can't happen? In California in 1980, Tom Metzger, grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, won a Democratic Congressional Primary, and the Dem leaders all endorsed the Republican.

So if the only alternative in a presidential race was to have a racist, bigoted, Nazi-emulating hate monger become a Democratic nominee in a close race someday, I would look to the superdelegates to protect Democratic values of equality and compassion, and use their power wisely to block such a nominee.

In a situation like we presently have, however, where we simply have a choice between a very liberal progressive vs. an establishment moderate Democrat, the people's choice should prevail. There will always be shifts from left to center or vice versa, and those should be respected as the will of the people. The party should not force one candidate down the people's throats if the people are voting for change, within that range of values that our party stands for.

I could see a couple of other scenarios where the party leaders might need to step in and vote for a candidate who didn't win the popular vote. What if the leading candidate had a serious medical problem and couldn't formally withdraw--was in a coma, for instance? Or if the winning candidate was indicted or worse, convicted of a serious felony? (As in CA, where a legislator was convicted of gunrunning and conspiring with organized crime) Or if a serious scandal broke AFTER the primaries were over -- such as the scandal about John Edwards fathering a baby with his mistress? In all the examples in this paragraph, the superdelegates would have info that emerged only after voters cast their votes and could perhaps forestall a catastrophe by acting on that new information.

So yes, I can see a role for superdelegates, but I think it should be defined more narrowly to only allow them to ignore the popular vote if there are certain very specific conditions -- not just liking one candidates more than the other, or repaying someone who campaigned for them, or trying to stay in the good graces of party officials, as goes on so much in the super delegate process right now.