Democrats pledge to limit superdelegates, but don’t say how

this group ultimately saddled her with charges of favoritism.

The DNC, at its winter meeting, approved language that simply committed the party to reducing the “perceived influence” of those party leaders in the nominating process, a goal that both Clinton and Sanders endorsed during the 2016 convention.

How to do that — the DNC didn’t say. The next chance comes this summer when a party committee digs into the matter again.

The dispute pits those Democrats who want to tie the nomination more exclusively to the voters’ preferences and veteran party hands who want to maintain their sway and status in presidential politics.

The DNC chairman, Tom Perez, insists the party “will improve the democratic process” before 2020.

Along with changing superdelegate rules, the party is promising to retool of its system of nominating caucuses and primaries, with the goal of making them more accessible to voters, including newcomers to Democratic politics.

Perez frames the overall effort as necessary to prevent the resentments that weighed down Clinton in 2016.

“If we’re going to win elections, you’ve got to earn the trust of voters, and many voters had a crisis of confidence in the Democratic Party,” Perez told The Associated Press, adding that the notion of DNC players “putting their thumb on the scale” had “a lot of negative consequences.”

Clinton issued a statement after the DNC vote praising the body for pursuing changes that would “ensure a greater role (for) primaries in our nominating process.” She did not mention superdelegates, instead focusing on ideas such as same-day voter registration.

Superdelegates are convention delegates by virtue of some official post: DNC members, governors, members of Congress, party elders including past presidents and vice presidents, former national party leaders. Unlike pledged delegates whose ties to a specific candidate are mandated by the results of primaries and caucuses, superdelegates get to vote as they please.

At the 2016 convention, unpledged superdelegates accounted for about 15 percent of the all presidential nominating votes.

Clinton almost certainly wouldn’t have needed any of them to become the nominee. She won at least 3 million more primary votes than Sanders nationally, giving her a clear lead among pledged delegates who made up the overwhelming majority of the votes at the Philadelphia convention.

Sanders’ backers, however, cried foul over her strategy to rack up early superdelegate endorsements and claim a significant delegate lead before any primary or caucus ballots were cast. Adding to their outage was the postelection confirmation by longtime party players that the DNC made fundraising deals with Clinton’s campaign before she was the nominee.