Sanders ally pushes Dems on cutting superdelegates

A top aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign is circulating a letter to top Democrats, asking them to back an effort to remove superdelegates from the Democratic primary nomination system, BuzzFeed News reports.

Jeff Weaver, who managed Sanders’s campaign and went on to briefly run his spinoff group Our Revolution, is in talks with members of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign to build support for the petition. It urges the DNC to rely solely on delegates that follow the will of Democratic primary voters in determining the nomination.

{mosads}

Weaver also plans to approach top Democrats in Congress about the issue, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), according to BuzzFeed.

“We believe that the passage of these reforms is a fundamental and necessary step in re-establishing faith with those who have lost confidence in the Party as a vehicle for change,” reads the draft of the letter, obtained by BuzzFeed. “Now is the time to go forward, not backward.”

Weaver declined to comment on the letter to BuzzFeed, and a spokesperson for Clinton also declined to comment when asked whether the former Democratic nominee would join Sanders’s push.

The letter follows negotiations on the Democrats’ Unity Reform Commission, which was formed after the 2016 election with the aim of rebuilding the Democratic Party. One of its proposals is to cut superdelegates by about 60 percent and strip them of their votes during the first round of voting at the Democratic convention.

DNC members remain divided on the issue, and haven’t moved to act on the Unity Reform Commission’s proposals.

The approximately 700 superdelegates can back the candidate of their choosing regardless of how their state’s Democratic voters went in the primary.

Some DNC officials say the superdelegates, who swung strongly for Clinton in some cases against the will of primary voters in their state, are a safeguard against candidates like President Trump, who won the GOP nomination despite heavy opposition from mainstream Republicans.

“This whole idea runs completely counter to where the public is,” DNC Rules and Bylaws member Elaine Kamarck told BuzzFeed. “However, if the Trump presidency crashes and burns and takes the GOP with it, which is not unrealistic, this dialogue will start.”