This whole election cycle has convinced me that the corruption (that I always knew was there) truly runs deep. The system is rotten to the core. So I decided to look up a brief history of superdelegates.

The history is a bit involved but the basic premise is that the Democratic Party, in the wake of presidential campaign losses beginning in 1968, wanted a system that would insure that the best candidate was put forward.

Really.

Okay, stop laughing.

Anyway, in 1968 Hubert Humphrey was nominated despite not running in any of the primaries. This was due to party insiders. After he lost, a commission was put together to make the choice

“less subject to control by party leaders and more responsive to the votes cast in primary elections.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdelegate#Origins

This change was to try giving more power to the voters. After Carter lost in 1980, they then decided that the voters had too much power so they needed to boost the influence of the party insiders. And hence the superdelegate was born.

Well this still didn’t do the trick. The Democratic candidate lost in 1984 and 1988. The fact that both Mondale and Dukakis were lackluster candidates didn’t help, but in 1984 Mondale used superdelegates to push him over the top. Gary Hart’s foibles certainly helped in that regard.

An important point to remember is that the influence of superdelegates is moot when the candidate can win enough elected delegates but when that doesn’t happen and the superdelegates become involved, they invariably choose poorly. Between bad candidates and insider influence, the only chance a Democratic candidate ever seems to have is when it is a charismatic person, like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

There is something about having “star quality” that seems to really move the American public. It should come as no surprise in this election cycle that given the choice of Trump or Hillary, many will gravitate to Trump. They have seen him on their TV and for many that is all they need. Add in the fact that he appeals to large sections of the populace that believe in going back to the good old days (when white was right) and that Hillary is well and truly disliked, untrusted, even hated and you have a recipe for another Democratic loss.

The 2016 primary season resulted in a contested convention and if the Democratic establishment was serious about winning the presidency, the superdelegates should have gone with Bernie but then again, they couldn’t. He is not the right type of insider (all that socialists talk, don’tcha know). He has experience but for whatever reason, the ones crying out “it’s her turn” won out over common sense. So Clinton will lose and they will blame it on everything but themselves because they know best.

Is there a solution to this? I don’t know. If there ever was going to be a solution, one of the first things that needed to be done was to revamp and clean up our system of voting. America should practice what it preaches to the rest of the world about exit polls. Instead TPTB insist on a do what I say, not as I do approach because it makes it easier for them to cheat. Yeah, I know. Tin-Foil Hat (TFH)

Of course when the elections were finagled with in 2000 and 2004, the cry, especially at TOP, was to ignore the evidence of election fraud. We were told that we just didn’t have good enough candidates or there were third party spoilers. The proof of that is the election of Barack Obama. So, the system works according to them.

We couldn’t foresee that the refusal to fix the problems in our elections would lead to the major election fraud in the Democratic primaries of 2016. It’s almost as if the Democratic leadership knew all along about how this stuff works and decided against a real remedy so that they could cheat their favored candidate into the nomination. Oops, there goes that TFH again.

I will end with this final thought.

When Obama was running in 2004, there was a cry for the end of dynasties. We had Bush, then Clinton and then Bush. This benefited Obama because many people wanted ‘change’ and didn’t want another Clinton. This got me thinking about how to avoid dynasties.

People have spoken of having a constitutional convention to impose term limits for Congress. I like the idea but I believe we also need to have an amendment to the Constitution in regards to members of a Presidents family being able to run for President at a later date.

This would have two parts. The first would be that the spouse of a former President is ineligible to become President themselves unless the former President is dead. This would make it far harder to have a presidential dynasty. It also prevents a third and fourth term of a former President by proxy.

The second part would state that a child of a former President could not run for President until a set time period had passed. I believe the minimum should be 20 years. So this would mean that Chelsea could not run for President herself (if she was so inclined) until 2020.

Had this amendment been in place in 2000, GW Bush, the worst presidency in modern history, would never have happened and Hillary could not run because Bill is still alive.

I can dream, can't I?