Reforming the Rules
Writing in yesterday's Financial Times, Clive Crook articulated the conventional wisdom about the potential problems for the Democrats:"The root of the problem is not the candidates but the Democrats’ deranged electoral system. The closer the race, the more important it is that the process be beyond reproach: this one is beyond belief. Devising a system better calculated to nurture the loser’s grievances in a close fight would be difficult. And whenever the party has had an opportunity to make the system worse, it has seized it."
The types of changes desired by many Clinton sympathizers were recently summarized by an old acquaintance of mine, Carter Bundy, who currently serves as political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. (Bundy wrote in his personal capacity, though the national branch of AFSCME has aggressively supported Hillary Clinton.) Bundy described three of the Dems' nominating rules—caucuses, delegate allocation, and the existence of superdelegates—as"absurdly unfair," so much so that whichever side loses would have justification of feeling that the nomination was stolen.
Caucuses actually appear to have been the preferred method of choosing delegates for most members of the McGovern-Fraser commission, the post-1968 reform body that designed the basics of the system under which the party now struggles. Before 2008, critics of caucuses suggested they gave too much power to party activists, and (at least in the case of Iowa) were dominated by older white women (the 2008 Hillary Clinton constituency, ironically). The Clintons do not appear to have pushed the party to abolish caucuses during the eight years of Bill Clinton's presidency. And judging by increased turnout and the non-ideologically skewed nature of this year's results, the 2008 caucuses have been strong successes.
In 2008, of course, the Clinton campaign has strongly criticized caucuses (except for New Mexico's, which Hillary Clinton narrowly won) from a class-based perspective, and have come close to deeming caucus results inherently illegitimate. Bundy makes a similar argument against this"absurdly exclusionary" system:"Caucuses are wrong because they exclude military personnel, families with children, the elderly, the sick, people who work swing shifts (including nurses, corrections officers, construction workers, police officers and fast-food and other restaurant employees), and people who work second jobs."
Caucuses with absentee ballot provisions (like that in Maine, where around 4000 people caucused by absentee this year) can't be deemed exclusionary in any way. And it's not entirely clear how many people who wanted to participate have been"excluded" from other 2008 caucuses. (It seems highly unlikely that the number would have changed the results in any substantial way.) In any event, a problem with exclusion can easily be solved by having other caucus state imitate Maine's absentee policy.
It's also worth remembering that caucuses have real advantages, at least in smaller states. They provide an opportunity for Red State Democratic parties (like Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, or Wyoming) to use the presidential nominating process to recruit new activists. And in a frontloaded system where the nominee has too often been chosen, de facto, at a very early stage, the caucus system allows participation in the nomination process without forcing the taxpayers of smaller states to fund what too often have amounted to meaningless presidential primaries. Until the parties ensure that all states' presidential races are meaningful at least some of the time (through, perhaps, a rotating primary system), imposing the abolition of caucuses would be unfair.
Bundy also criticizes the allocation process, comparing the results from Idaho and Pennsylvania:"In a state with just more than 20,000 total Democratic votes, Barack netted 12 delegates over Hillary. In a consistent, democratic system, using the Idaho math of a net of 12 delegates per 13,000 vote advantage, Hillary’s 215,000 vote win in Pennsylvania should have yielded her a net gain of 198 delegates. Instead, she’s likely to net 12 delegates or fewer from the Keystone State."
It seems to me that the supermajority allocation system is one thing the current system has done right. Candidates who win by huge margins—as Obama did in Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, Virginia, DC, and Alaska, or as Clinton did in Arkansas—get disproportionate benefits. And if one candidate is intensely unpopular in several states, that should be factored into the allocation process.
In this respect, the problem was not the difference in number of voters between Idaho and PA, but a difference in margin: If Clinton had carried the Pennsylvania primary by 25 points, she would have scored a decisive delegate win.
A welcome change in the allocation process might be less drastic—eliminating the possibility for congressional districts to receive even number of delegates, which, as we've seen in this race, can result in a candidate carrying a district by 10 or even 15 points and receiving the same number of delegates as the second-place finisher.
Finally, Bundy urges the Democratic Party to abolish superdelegates. I think a case can be made that members of Congress and governors should be superdelegates—they are, after all, the people who would have to work with the nominee if he or she is elected president. There seems to be no good reason, on the other hand, why party officials should have automatic votes.
Bundy also notes, correctly, that there's no consistent rationale for superdelegates to make their decision. And the 2008 campaign has exposed a serious structural flaw regarding superdelegates: after she fell significantly behind in the elected delegate race, Hillary Clinton's only realistic chance at winning the nomination was to make Obama unelectable in the general election—so superdelegates could then have a practical justification for rejecting the leader in elected delegates.
In many ways, however, this is a lose/lose proposition for the party: if superdelegates make the unprecedented move of rejecting the pledged delegate leader, surely Clinton (who's only running even in polls right now) will suffer some sort of intra-party backlash, dropping her behind McCain. And if superdelegates, as is likely, support the pledged delegate leader, Obama nonetheless has been weakened by what the Times correctly termed Clinton's"low road to victory."
Of Bundy's three proposals, then, it seems to me the most likely change will come in the existence, or at least number, of superdelegates.