Samantha Bee tells Democrats to stop worrying and love their superdelegates

(Image credit: Full Frontal)

last updated 12 April 2016

Some Democrats, especially those supporting Bernie Sanders, are really upset about superdelegates, with some Sanders supporters going so far as to harass or intimidate the party officials who are backing Hillary Clinton, Samantha Bee said on Monday's Full Frontal. But what are superdelegates? she asked. (Here's our helpful explainer.) Bee walked through their history, with a little poetic license. "First of all, political parties aren't the government, they're semi-private clubs," Bee began. "If they wanted, they could use a sorting hat to to pick their nominees." She looked back at a photo of Ted Cruz wearing the Harry Potter hat and cried, "Yeach, Slytherin!"

"In the 1800s, party officials would just gather in a snuff bar and nominate the guy with the best facial hair," Bee said. They introduced party conventions in the 1900s, and only injected democracy into the process after anti-war protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago — the 1968 version of Bee covering the election is pretty great. Anti-war Democrats responded in 1972 by nominating George McGovern, who lost in a landslide, then centrists tapped Jimmy Carter in 1976, who won but was derailed in 1980 by Ted Kennedy. At that point, Bee said, "the Democratic Party had OD'd on democracy — oh God, even their overdoses are boring — so in 1982, the grownups said, 'Enough.'" That's when the superdelegate was born.

But the superdelegates won't subvert the will of Democratic voters, only prevent them from making a big mistake, like John Edwards, she said. "If Bernie gets more votes than Hillary, her superdelegates will drop her faster than she drops her fake Southern accent the second she leaves South Carolina. How do I know? Because they did it in '08." Superdelegates "aren't there to protect Democrats from someone like this," she said, in front of a photo of Sanders, "they're there to protect them from someone like this," Donald Trump. "Believe me," she said, "Republicans would give their left nut for superdelegates right now." Watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.