Sanders’ supporters put pressure on Clinton backers
D.C. | WASHINGTON — Nancy Schumacher says she just wanted to do her civic duty, and so she heeded the call to become a superdelegate for Hillary Clinton. But in the year of the angry voter, not even an administrative assistant from Elk River, Minn., can escape the outrage.
“Some of the (phone and email) messages called me names. Some of them called Hillary names. And others said I was a stupid b.... and something bad will happen to me,” said Schumacher, a Democratic committee member. “It’s kind of hard to take sometimes.”
Bernie Sanders defied expectations to turn his long-shot presidential bid into a real threat for the Democratic nomination. Now, as his path to the White House becomes all-but-impossible, some of his supporters are lashing out at a system they believe was engineered against them from the start.
The superdelegates include public officials: governors, former presidents and even Sanders himself. But they also include people like Schumacher, volunteers who’ve generally stayed behind the scenes.
Though they’ve been part of Democratic presidential elections since 1984, the superdelegates have never been a determining factor. Even in 2008, when several dozen switched to Barack Obama from Clinton, Obama won enough pledged delegates to make superdelegate support largely irrelevant.
Several liberal organizations have circulated petitions asking superdelegates to align their choice with the vote in their state. Even if that happened, Clinton would still likely be the nominee, given her lead in the popular vote.
That leaves Sanders’ most ardent fans — many of whom are relatively new to the political process — looking for someone to blame.