UPDATE: The Denver Post‘s John Frank says that media, including colleague Mark Matthews, is barred from any delegate meetings. Because, again, #democracy and #transparency. Apparently, it’s “far worse” than Republican National Convention. Ouch.
.@mkmatthews reports @coloradodems banning him from all DNC delegate meetings. Far worse than @cologop #copolitics #coleg
— John Frank (@ByJohnFrank) July 25, 2016
Not the nominee.
It looks like Bernie Sanders supporters tried to steal a page out of the Free the Delegates playbook, but were no match for the strong arm of the Democratic National Committee. According to Twitter, the Sanders fans were literally locked out of the DNC rules committee meeting. So much for transparency – at least the RNC didn’t forcibly remove Free the Delegates.
At issue was the controversial use of super delegates – party insiders and elected officials who are each granted a vote at the convention. The fact that these insiders can vote any way they want, regardless of how their states or districts voted, set Sanders far behind his rival from the start. In Colorado, Sanders won the strawpolls; however, super delegates all sided with Clinton, disenfranchising thousands of Democratic voters.
There are 712 super delegates; a significant number considering that it represents almost 1/3 of the number of delegate votes that a candidate needs to earn the Democrat nomination. Hillary Clinton has almost all of those locked down.
The Democratic Convention has had a very tough run up to its opening session this past weekend, with DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz being pushed out over emails that showed her partiality towards Hillary Clinton during the primary race, and now this melt down at the rules committee.
It will be interesting to see how the Democrat leadership will be able to handle the animosity between angry establishment Democrats who are running the show, and the angrier Sanders delegates who feel shortchanged.
Hope you stocked up on popcorn, it will be an interesting week in Philly.