Former Vice Chair of the Democrat Party of Florida and former Chair of the Palm Beach County Democratic Party, Mark Alan Siegel, had some ideas about how the Hillary Clinton campaign should handle the situation with super delegates and Bernie Sanders in an email leaked by WikiLeaks.
In the email, Siegel brags about being “the guy who drafted the ‘super-delegate’ provisions of the party’s delegate selection rules.”
Siegel points out that originally the super delegate system was only supposed to account for 10% of the convention. However, after the DNC reformed the system, they made it account for over 15% and, according to Siegel, “DNC ADDED THEMSELVES as automatic delegates.”
Siegel recognizes the fact that Senator Bernie Sanders people are not happy about the super delegates, especially since most of them came out in support of Clinton.“Bernie and his people have been bitching about super delegates and the huge percentage that have come out for Hillary” Siegel said.
“Why not throw Bernie a bone and reduce the super delegates in the future of the original draft of members of the House and Senate, governors and big city mayors, eliminating the DNC members who are not State chairs or vice-Chairs. (Frankly, DNC members don’t really represent constituencies anyway. I should know. I served on the DNC first as Executive Director and then as an elected member for 10 years.)”
Siegel went on to say, “So if we ‘give’ Bernie this in the Convention’s rules committee, his people will think they’ve ‘won’ something from the Party Establishment. And it functionally doesn’t make any difference anyway. They win. We don’t lose. Everyone is happy.”
The Clinton campaign seems to have ignored Siegel’s request and suggestion to reform the super delegate system — even after he highlighted the need to keep the Sanders people on board. “I don’t know if Robbie [Robert Mook] is focusing on the convention at this point, but the Bernie people have a lot of passion and we should try to keep them marginally on board. Just saying…”