We’ve already reported before that the DNC is really unhappy with Clinton and seemingly distancing themselves from here. Turns out that they’re changing some of their internal rules to stop her from running again — at least under their flag.
Their new “unity commission” has been meeting over the last year with the intent of getting these rules changed.
As reported by ABC News:
Sources close to the commission who have seen working drafts of its current report tell ABC News the panel plans to recommend dramatic cuts to the individual voting power of superdelegates and new rules around caucuses and primaries to improve access for voters and recordkeeping.
he unity commission was created during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and tasked with devising a plan to limit the party’s total number of superdelegate votes by two-thirds.
Superdelegates are elected officials and party leaders who, in the past, have been free to support any candidate for the presidential nomination in contrast to pledged delegates who support candidates based on local popular vote results in each state’s primary or caucus.
After Democrats’ surprise and devastating loss in the presidential election last year, the commission’s work took on a new, broader purpose to analyze the party’s shortcomings and missteps as a whole.
Sources close to the commission say the group’s likely recommendation on superdelegates will be for some select superdelegates such as Congress members, governors and former presidents to continue as unbound superdelegates, but to change the rest of the system so the votes of all other superdelegates are pooled or bound in another way to match up with to the popular vote totals from their respective states.
“One of the big problems you had in the 2016 election was that one candidate had 400 or more quote-unquote “delegates” before a single voter had cast a vote,” Sen. Bernie Sanders’ former campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, told ABC News of the primary race between the eventual nominee, Hillary Clinton, and Sanders. Weaver now sits on the unity commission.
“So you had Iowa, which was basically a tie, and after New Hampshire the pledged delegates were close to even, but the reporting on TV was 400 for one [candidate] and 50 or 60 for the other candidate. It creates the perception of inevitability from the get-go,” Weaver said.