Following Bernie Sanders decisive victory in New Hampshire, some supporters noticed that opponent Hillary Clinton had accumulated almost ten times the delegates as primary victor Sanders had.
This cognitive dissonance comes from the two-tiered primary process the Democrats follow: the voters determine what percentage of delegates go to the candidates and then the superdelgates, comprised of party elites and politicians, also have influence as “superdelegates.” The political cronies on the left are lining up behind Hillary.
And now even more superdelegates are coalescing behind Hillary.
Hillary Clinton has picked up endorsements from 87 more superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention, dwarfing Sanders’ gain from the New Hampshire primary, according to a new Associated Press survey. Sanders has added just 11 superdelegate endorsements.
The AP explains that if Hillary continues to amass super delegates, Sanders will have to win enormous amounts of “regular folk” to stay competitive.
After the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders has a small 36-32 lead among delegates won in primaries and caucuses. But when superdelegates are included, Clinton leads 481-55, according to the AP count. It’s essentially a parallel election that underscores Clinton’s lopsided support from the Democratic establishment.
Earlier this week, I wrote about how Sanders supporters are taking action and contacting the superdelegates, urging them to support the popular candidate, not the hand-picked elitist candidate. But that doesn’t seem to be going over very well with some of the “supers.”
“I’m sick and tired of them,” Cordelia Lewis-Burks, a superdelegate from Indiana, said of the Sanders backers. “It’s very aggravating to be bashed on my own computer by these people who it’s probably the first time they’ve ever voted. I’ve been in the trenches since I was 20.”
Lacy Johnson, another Indiana superdelegate who backs Clinton, isn’t caving to pressure.
“They were saying ‘We’re not going to forget this,'” Johnson said.
“I’m an African-American male who is in my 60s,” Johnson said. “I have experienced the struggles. The experiences they are sharing don’t faze me in comparison.”
The Sanders camp seems to be as naive and idealistic about the consequences of superdelegates as it is about the free market economy. And Sanders doesn’t have a strong relationship with the Democratic Party insiders because he is an independent. It remains to be seen if these folks will come around to Sanders if that is who the people want as their nominee.
Some of the “supers” are not convinced Sanders can win. “He’d get killed!” said Rosalind Wyman, a DNC member from California. “A socialist independent?”
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