2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Super delegates have worked for the Dems in the past. Why all of a sudden the move to get rid [View all]The Second Stone
(2,900 posts)but there are people who don't like superdelegates because they don't understand that all but 20 of them are elected (public office or party office, but elected by Democrats) and are unhappy about the possible outcome. I think 2008 demonstrated how well they work, as they changed when a mainstream candidate overtook the insider favorite, and the Clinton supporters changed and went with Obama as the public did.
The people who want the change are basically party outsiders who think that the mere knowledge that an outsider will have an initial uphill battle will discourage non-Democrats from claiming to be Democrats without ever having walked the walk of helping the party.
Two outsiders ran in this cycle, one in each party. Trump, the one who ran on the Republican side, demagogued the whole race and it wasn't even close towards the end. Superdelegates would not have mattered if the Republicans had more of them due to their required voting.