So, some people are now arguing that superdelegates should pick the Democratic presidential nominee not on the basis of pledged delegates. Further, we are told that superdelegates should not pick the nominee based on who won the popular vote in their district or state.
Additionally, according to this newly fashionable belief, superdelegates should not base their decision on whether they agree with a candidate's proposed policies, who they think would be a more effective commander in chief, or who they simply like the best.
Instead, this line of thinking goes, superdelegates should pick the nominee who performs better in general election polling against the presumptive Republican nominee, who in this case is Donald Trump.
You know what? After reflecting for a little while on the 2008 and 2016 Democratic presidential nomination campaigns, I have decided that I entirely agree with this line of thinking. We should get rid of primaries and caucuses, and instead choose our nominee entirely on the basis of general election polling against the presumptive Republican nominee.
Here is how this would work best:
All current and former, living and eligible, Governors, U.S. Senators, Cabinet Secretaries, Four Star generals, Speakers of the House and Vice-Presidents of the United States who would be interested in becoming the Democratic Party presidential nominee should submit their name to a panel of pollsters chosen by the superdelegates.
Once the Republican primaries and caucuses produce a presumptive nominee, this panel of pollsters would spend two weeks conducting exhaustive national and swing state trial heats of all candidates who submitted their name for consideration.
After the polling is completed, announce the results and whoever performs best in these public opinion surveys becomes the presidential nominee. Second best gets to be the nominee for vice-president.
I will now present to you four arguments as to why this nomination system is irrefutably, mind-blowingly superior to our current system. Once you read these arguments you can never go back to disagreeing with them:
The primaries would be over now. Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee on May 4, the day after the Indiana primary. That means, in my system, the nomination campaign would have started on May 5, and ended yesterday with the announcement of the polling results. Instead, the Democratic nomination campaign could well go on for another--brace yourself--two months, after already dragging on for an entire year. This new system would be soooooo much better than what we do now.
The Internet wouldn't suck anymore. Remember when you liked logging onto Facebook, or Twitter, or looking at the comments in Daily Kos? That was pretty great, wasn't it? Well, in my system, that could happen again--and happen all the time! You know you want life to be like this.
No more arguing over the validity of open primaries, closed primaries, caucuses or Nevada State Democratic Party convention credentialing committees. Since election results of any kind no longer matter--or even really exist--no longer would you hear about why closed primaries justly keep out annoying people who refuse to call themselves Democrats, or some lengthy diatribe on Reddit about which county delegate seating plan in the third tier caucuses of South Nevada is the only, true democratic seating plan. Instead, we would have one, perfectly equal universal system of voting: none at all.
We'd never have to go through this again. Do you know anyone who still enjoys primary season? Of course you don't, because after 2008 and 2016 no one enjoys primary season anymore. You might like the outcome if your candidate wins, but even then you only like it when it's over. The journey is definitely not the fun part--only the destination matters. In my system, there would still be a destination, just no journey. That's much better.
Since you have now read these four irrefutable arguments, you now believe, as I do, that superdelegates should choose the Democratic nominee based on general election polling matchups against the presumptive Republican nominee.
These arguments are irrefutable, and so if you do not agree with them, you must not have read them. If this is the case for you, then please return to the top of this post and start over.
Everyone else, please share this article on Facebook or somewhere else, until every delegate to the Democratic National Committee sees and reads them. Since these argument are irrefutable, once every delegate reads them, they will institute this system at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, thus sparing us from ever having to go through primary and caucus season again.
So please, share this article now. It will make you a national hero.