letter
December 7, 2017

To Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez and the members of the Unity Reform Commission:

As the Unity Reform Commission prepares to recommend reforms to the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination process, the undersigned organizations write to express our continued opposition to the undemocratic role of unpledged “superdelegates” in the nomination process. On behalf of our more than 12 million members, we urge the Commission to recommend the full elimination of superdelegates’ power to overrule the will of Democratic primary voters in selecting the party’s presidential nominee.

We support the elimination of the superdelegate system altogether, such that the effective votes of all delegates are allotted to states, territories, and Democrats Abroad through the rubric that currently governs pledged delegate allotments. If this is not the Commission’s final recommendation, the Commission should at the very least follow the mandate from the Democratic National Convention’s Rules Committee to reduce the voting power of superdelegates by approximately two-thirds.

We commend the efforts within the Democratic National Committee and by the Unity Commission to move the party toward successfully combating the harmful agenda of Donald Trump and his Republican Party with an inclusive message that speaks to voters in every county and ZIP code in America. Yet, we maintain still more can – and must – be done to build trust with the party’s progressive base and persuadable voters alike that the party lives up to its values of fairness, transparency, and inclusivity. That conviction can only be strengthened with a presidential nominating process decided by voters alone, without the potential for that judgment to be overruled by well- connected elites.

Ending the ability of superdelegates to override the will of Democratic voters in selecting the party’s nominee is increasingly a consensus position. The call from former DNC Chair Tim Kaine – a superdelegate himself and the party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2016 – is just one recent example. Similarly, Chair Perez, you have recently penned a piece expressing your commitment to reforms to strengthen the party, stating “even the perception of impartiality or an unfair advantage undermines our ability to win” and that “the new DNC under my leadership is committed to the task of making sure that our 2020 nominating process will be unquestionably fair.”

As Democrats seek to claim the mantle of economic populism from a Republican Party driving historically plutocratic policies, the role of superdelegates in selecting Democratic presidential nominees is a conspicuously elite-driven process undermining that effort. Furthermore, the superdelegate system remains starkly unrepresentative. Its continuation would contradict the purported values of the party and its members, and reduce the party’s moral authority.

• The system undermines representative democracy and means that the electorate is not necessarily decisive in determining who will be the Democratic nominees for president and vice president. It also dilutes the voters’ say over the party’s platform and the rules under which it operates. Astonishingly, these unelected delegates have essentially as much weight as do the pledged delegates from 23 states, the District of Columbia, Democrats Abroad, and four territories combined.
• The system undermines the Democratic Party's commitment to gender equity. While the party’s charter rightfully mandates that equal numbers of pledged delegates be male and female, a near super-majority of superdelegates are men.
• The Democratic Party prides itself on its commitment to racial justice and the racial diversity of its ranks. Yet the superdelegates system appears to skew the party away from appropriate representation of communities of color. Proportionately, approximately 20% fewer superdelegates in 2016 hailed from communities of color than was true of the 2008 and 2012 pledged delegate cohorts, or of the voters who supported President Obama in those years’ general elections.
• In recent cycles America’s younger voters have overwhelmingly supported Democrats. Yet while the median Obama voter was 44 years old and the average Democrat is 47 years old, the average superdelegate in 2016 was approximately 60 years old.
  

Many of the candidates finding success in special and local elections over the past 12 months have been first-time candidates, and the surge in candidate recruitment across the country augurs well for the party’s prospects. But giving party insiders an outsize voice in the selection of presidential nominees feeds the perception that only the well connected ought to consider running for office within the Democratic Party.

We urge the members of the Unity Reform Commission to recommend an idea whose time has come: to end the superdelegate system and create a fair, transparent, and inclusive presidential nomination process in which Democratic primary voters can rest assured their voices will not be overruled by well-connected elites. But at a minimum, the Commission should implement the guidelines in its founding directive to dramatically reduce the voting power of superdelegates.

In either event, we urge the Rules and Bylaws Committee and the full membership of the DNC to stand ready to end the superdelegate system and allow the party to move through this critical period confident the process for selecting the party’s next standard bearer is true to the party’s values, and unified behind an inclusive agenda.

Signed,

Center for Popular Democracy Action Courage Campaign
CREDO Action
Demand Progress Action MoveOn.org
National Nurses United
NDN
Other98
Our Revolution
Presente Action
Progressive Change Campaign Committee Progressive Democrats of America RootsAction.org
Social Security Works

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ed. - and a response from a small group of activists...
Movement for a People's Party
December 9, 2017

Contact:
Carol Ehrle

Consultants, Clintonites and Corporate Lobbyists to Decide Whether Political Revolution May Proceed

Washington D.C. — In the latest example of kicking the can down the road, the DNC Unity Reform Commission announced a handful of non-binding recommendations that remarkably will not even be decided upon until next fall or later and cannot even be fully implemented by the party.

The Unity Reform Commission, the DNC Rules and Bylaws committee, and the DNC are full of Hillary Clinton loyalists, corporate lobbyists, high-priced consultants, and most outrageously, people who actually participated in rigging the American presidential election, like Donna Brazile. Lobbyists from Goldman Sachs, Fox News, Citgo, Citigroup and other multi-billion dollar corporations also sit on the DNC. A once proud progressive movement has been reduced to begging committees of corporate lobbyists and Clintonites for permission to continue the political revolution.

The DNC rigged the 2016 presidential election. Now it has made the perpetrators the jury on their own “Unity” “Reform” Commission.

Even if the Unity Reform Commission recommends all of the changes that Sen. Sanders wants, and the Rules Committee with zero Sanders’ supporters approves them, and two-thirds of the lobbyist-packed DNC adopts them, the Democratic Party could simply undo them all and create an even more rigged nomination process right before the primaries. Or they could just ignore their own rules, like they do with the impartiality clause in their bylaws.

They’ll have every incentive to do so. After all, what can we expect from a party that defends its right to rig an election in open court? What can we expect from a party that sees nothing wrong with the money laundering scheme that Hillary Clinton used to rig the primaries in 2016?

The Democratic Party told us everything that we needed to know when it reminded us that as a private corporation, it can pick its candidates in “cigar filled back rooms.” In other words, the primaries are a charade, designed to create the illusion of choice.

The corporate lobbyists, Clinton loyalists, and beltway consultants control the Democratic Party’s rules and progressives are completely at their mercy. They can change them, then change them back. They can make them worse. They can ignore them. They can outright ban Bernie from running at any minute by requiring presidential candidates to have been a registered Democrat for four years prior. What kind of revolution puts itself completely at the mercy of the establishment that it seeks to overthrow?

“There’s nothing complicated about restoring democracy to your primary. If the Democratic Party was whatsoever concerned with the legitimacy of its elections, it could have approved changes at its Philadelphia convention (in July 2016) or at any subsequent meeting of the DNC, noted Nick Brana, founder and director of Movement for a People’s Party, formerly Draft Bernie for a People’s Party.  Instead, “the party has opted to endlessly delay and mislead people who are clamoring for real change.”

Brana was the national political outreach coordinator for Bernie 2016 and lobbied the DNC members to cast their superdelegate votes for Sanders during the presidential primaries.

After a year and a half of negotiations spanning several cities, the best that the Democratic Party could muster was a set of non-binding recommendations that, even if approved, will make the Democratic primary less democratic than the Republican primary.

Despite superdelegates being antithetical to democracy and harkening back to the days when party bosses outright picked the nominees, the Unity Reform Commission decided to recommend keeping at least a couple hundred superdelegates, each with the power of tens of thousands of voters and wholly unaccountable to the will of the voters. Meanwhile, the Republicans have zero unbound superdelegates.

Noticeably absent from the commission’s report were any recommendations challenging the rampant corruption in the party. No resolutions were made banning corporate money from the party. Or lobbyist gifts. Or the use of super PACS. Or revolving door jobs on Wall Street.

The Sanders campaign taught the country that politicians cannot take money from billionaires and simultaneously represent working people. Yet the party did nothing to address the issue at the core of its corruption. “How are we supposed to free ourselves from the corrupting influence of big donors without even challenging their mechanisms of political control?” asked Brana.

We’re a group of Bernie campaign staffers, delegates and volunteers who think it’s time for a people’s party. We’re an all-volunteer, people-powered movement. This is a labor of love and we work around the clock to make a people’s party a reality.

Organizers Include:

Carol Ehrle
Daniel Deceder
Ida Martinac
Jonathan Lancelot
Karena Acree-Páez
Nick Brana
Randi Wickliff
Rod Brana
Teri Gidwitz
& thousands of Americans