Hi Professor Jefferies,
I'm a student in your online American Government class. Lately I've been learning more than I ever wanted to know about Superdelegates in the Democratic party and I had just one question. Would you consider Superdelegates as another, and more recent example, of checks and balances? I was watching an interview with the DNC chair and she seemed to indicate this was the case. So, I guess my question would be, is the Superdelegate there to prevent an excess of popular democracy from swinging the party too far to the left?
And I totally understand if you don't have time to answer this, I was just curious.
Cheers
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Dear Just Curious,
I wouldn't consider them part of the checks and balances as we discuss them in class because they are not intended to keep each governing institution in its place. A political party isn't considered to be a governing institution - with the caveat that members of Congress organize around political parties. Parties in Congress are some sort of weird hybrid.
That said, I can see merit in her comments. Super delegates (I'll define these in a later post) are used by the leadership in the Democratic Party to limit the impact of primary voters in the party. That would be a check party elites have on party activists. Since party activists in the Democratic Party tend to swing left, they would in fact be a check on that and ensure the party doesn't go so far to the left that it cannot win a general election. Republicans have ways to ensure the party does not swing too far to the right, thought they don't use super delegates. I'll ad detail about how they try to do this elsewhere - right now their efforts don't seem to be very successful.
No worries about me not having time to answer your questions - you're paying for my time so you've got it coming.
Does this help?
