Rules Changes and the 2016 Presidential Nominations

There were party and Obama mainstays on the Rules and Bylaws Committee during that time, but none showed any signs of advocating for Biden or a Biden presidential run during the discussions on the 2016 delegate selection rules. The height of the consideration of and by the Vice President was a summer and fall 2015 phenomenon, a period well after the rules were set by the party.

While the 2008 Rules of the Republican Party allowed states to use truly proportional rules for allocating their national convention delegates (where a candidate receiving 50 % of the vote would receive approximately 50 % of the delegates), the overall proportionality requirement was more relaxed. A state was considered proportional even if it 1) allocated congressional district delegates in a winner-take-all fashion, 2) retained a qualifying threshold up to 20 % and/or 3) if it had a winner-take-all trigger of 50 % or more. The 2012 rules eliminated the possibility of the first exception while preserving the other two.

The so-called superdelegates are unpledged delegates, DNC party members and elected officials free to choose a candidate of their preference regardless of the results of the primary and caucus contests across the country. Superdelegates were added for the 1984 cycle following the Democratic Party’s Hunt Commission. The intent was twofold. First, the addition of unpledged party delegates provided some insulation against the possibility of the type of insurgent campaign that had been typical of the early trials — 1972 and 1976 — of the post-reform era. Second, rules makers envisioned a stronger relationship between the nominee and party elites working on their behalf during the fall general election campaign. If successful -- if the party won the White House -- that would hypothetically yield a stronger relationship between a Democratic president and Democratic members of Congress who had been those superdelegates.