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]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)actually have to come through.
One reason to have them is that Trump might have tried to run as a Democrat appealing to populist anti-establishment anger on the left. He wouldn't have done nearly as well with us, of course, but he might have knocked Bernie out or ended up dividing the delegate count so that the nomination went to the convention. In that case, we might conceivably have needed the superdelegates to protect the Democratic Party from offering a tRump to the nation for president.
The question is if, for instance, a far-left extremist candidate believed to be an electoral disaster in the making came to the convention with a majority of delegates, would the superdelegates use their power, and how bad would the situation have to be for the party, including down-ticket candidates, before they did? We don't know and the principle and practice are both against oversetting the popular vote.
Regarding the OP, I have no idea if it's a significant factor among others, or a nonfactor, but apparently the Democratic Black Caucus feels superdelegates help make up somewhat for under-representation elsewhere. (Oh, and I was happy to learn they are against open primaries because they would hurt minority Democrats.)