HRC would have been nominated without the superdelegates...that proves we don't NEED them.

[Ken Burch]

59. They could serve the same purpose by staying neutral until the voters have declared themselves.

It would be fine to have them as institutional memory, but not actually influencing who we nominate.

It implies that the primary voters can't be trusted to make a wise choice, and why would we want to implicitly insult the people who stay with us when nobody else does?

This is all a reaction to 1972, and it's a bogus reaction-Nixon has the whole process rigged, and once Chappaquiddick happened and Muskie collapsed over essentially nothing, there simply wasn't any savior figure who'd have done better if only the "pros" had been allowed to block McGovern.

And the "pros" who'd have tried to stop McGovern were the same "pros" who doomed us in '68 by insisting on imposing Humphrey as candidate when he had no real popular support anywhere and was totally out of touch with the realities of the year.