House Dems seethe over superdelegates plan

[Kenneth Almquist]

56. Even in 1972

which was the primary that inspired the creation of the superdelegate system, it's relevant that Hubert Humphrey got more votes than George McGovern, but McGovern got more delegates. So if there had been superdelegates in 1972, and they had voted to give Humphrey the nomination, they would have been giving the nomination to the candidate who got the most votes.

The only time there has been a serious effort to convince superdelegates to use their power to change the convention results was in 2016, when Bernie Sanders argued that the superdelegates should vote for him even though Clinton was expected to get more pledged delegates. The Sanders effort was spectacularly unsuccessful. It obviously didn't help that Sanders' earlier comments about superdelegates made it rather hypocritical for him to ask them to overturn the will of the voters, but the fact remains that it fell flat. The superdelegates are mostly elected officials, and they need a strong reason to act. The inspiration, as I noted, was the 1972 election, where the party nominated a candidate who lost 49 states. An even better example would be Donald Trump, who even the Republican leadership could see would be bad for the country if he won.