Video Credit: Bernie Sanders' campaign
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has all but officially lost to Secretary Clinton in this year’s presidential primary. However, true to form, he is not giving up. Instead of isolating his efforts to the final weeks of his presidential campaign, Sanders has committed to reforming the Democratic Party, calling for a “fundamental transformation.”
In a press conference held Tuesday, Sanders presented his list of necessary reforms for the Democratic Party.
He advocates for a new DNC leader, one “who is vigorously supporting and out working to bring people into the political process.” Sanders’ requests also included the removal of superdelegates, after which he encouraged existing superdelegates to vote in line with the people of their respective states.
A similar comment was made by Hillary Clinton in 2008, claiming that an absence of superdelegates would have allowed her to become the Democratic nominee instead of President Obama.
Sanders categorized superdelegates as “absurd,” seeing as the delegates pledge “some eight months or more before the first ballot cast.”
Open primaries – allowing independents to cast a vote in taxpayer-funded presidential primaries – along with increased staffing to prevent long voting lines and a deficiency in the numbers of polling stations were also on Bernie’s agenda for the Democratic Party.
Open primaries were openly criticized by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the current DNC chair, in May. She expressed a desire to do away with them entirely, despite election funding coming from all taxpayers, not just members of the Republican and Democratic parties.
Sanders is rejecting party-focused elections, and wants the party and the entire election process to be more inclusive to all voters, including those independent of either major party and want to have an equal and meaningful say in who they want to be president.
The press conference was held prior to his meeting with Secretary Hillary Clinton on Tuesday evening and some speculate that his laundry list for the DNC doubles as his last requests before he pledges his support to Hillary Clinton.
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