As of Monday, the Democratic Party announced that they will no longer use superdelegates to nominate a candidate for the general election. Rather, in order to interfere with the process of selecting a Democratic nominee, the party will instead force the candidates to play each other in a game of Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots — a method far less obvious and intrusive than giving high-ranking party officials the opportunity to nominate a candidate potentially over the veto of the voter base.
“I think it’s nice to finally see some democratic reform in the primary process,” said James Schmitt, a Bernie Sanders supporter and campaign volunteer. “It’s also definitely too little too late, which is right on brand for the Democratic party. So it’s good to see them keeping in touch with their roots in that way.”
Unpledged delegates, or superdelegates, made up 15 percent of the total amount of delegates used to nominate a candidate for presidency, and that 15 percent will now be allocated to the winner of the Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots match. Therefore, the move gives renewed hope to the Bernie campaign, who currently lags behind frontrunner Joe Biden, and could almost certainly have expected to be snubbed of any superdelegates.
“You know I think it’s really great what the party has done. It’s about time they got rid of superdelegates,” Sanders said. “And of course, I’ve been training very hard for this robot fight. I do a sit-up for each donation of $27, which if you don’t know, that’s our average donation amount because we’re a grassroots campaign. We’re not a movement of billionaires. I’m not doing a sit-up for each million dollars we receive from a corporation, no, I’m doing a sit-up for each individual donation. And I’m doing it while listening to 'Eye of the Tiger' on repeat, and it’s going to allow me to get very strong, and I’m going to fight for the working people of America, literally and figuratively.”
