yesterday's enthusiast

philsandifer:

steviemcfly:

I feel like with the media knowing full well that superdelegates’ votes can change based on the changing tide of elections–even Bill and Hillary Clinton changed their votes and voted for Obama at the convention in ‘08–it’s completely dishonest to count superdelegates in the current delegate counts. Clinton’s displayed total being boosted by over four hundred points that she doesn’t actually yet have just serves to sway voters in the middle to vote with the candidate who appears to have a mandate and Bernie supporters to feel disillusioned and stay home.

The light blue is pledged delegates–that is, delegates won in primaries. The dark blue is superdelegates, whose votes are not officially cast until the convention in July and can change up until the second they’re actually cast. In reality, Bernie Sanders is behind Hillary Clinton, but not by the ridiculous amount the media is (successfully) attempting to sell us, because if Bernie did pick up enough delegates in the later primaries to gain on or surpass Hillary, there’s a better-than-good chance some number of these superdelegates would switch sides before the convention.

It’s almost as ridiculous as if they started adding delegates from primaries that haven’t happened because of poll numbers in those states. The media reporting votes that haven’t been cast as though they have is extremely dishonest and is transparently in service of a goal, which is a Clinton victory.

This isn’t to say Bernie would definitely win if these deceptive tactics weren’t being used, but that these tactics are interfering with the fairness of the election.

I think adding in superdelegates - which not only can change but emphatically did change in 2008 when Clinton’s superdelegate lead rapidly evaporated in a storm of defections once Obama secured a majority of the pledged delegates - is actually considerably more ridiculous than modeling future primaries based on polling and demographic data, which was capable of accurately predicting the end result of the 2008 process pretty much as of the day after Super Tuesday.