Progressive political advocacy group MoveOn.org issued a statement today discouraging any attempts to use Super Delegates to overturn the popular vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has maintained that this is his path to the Democratic Party's nomination, as results from state primaries show his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton with a majority of the popular vote, pledged delegates, and won states.
From Talking Points Memo:
“MoveOn members believe, as we have long advocated, that the nomination should go to the winner of the majority of pledged delegates, and that undemocratic superdelegates should not overturn the will of the voters,” MoveOn Political Action's Executive Director, Ilya Sheyman, said in the statement.
Sanders won MoveOn's endorsement in January with over 78 percent of the 340,665 votes cast by the group's members.In the statement, Sheyman applauded Sanders for revolutionizing “politics as we know it” with his grassroots campaign and insisted that “the policies Bernie has advanced should be included in the Democratic platform.”
Sheyman said that Sanders “has more than earned the right to figure out the next steps for this movement on his own timeline,” but he implied that Clinton’s status as the presumptive nominee after landslide primary wins in New Jersey and California, which secured her lead in both pledged delegates and super-delegates, shut the door on Sander's hopes for a contested convention. The former secretary of state also leads Sanders in the popular vote.
