Hello! Hi and welcome to Full Frontal, I am Samantha Bee. We are so glad to be back and
oh, dang, things have gotten ugly since we left!
I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me.
I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq.
I think Nanna and Zady are getting a divorce. That is a love-fest compared to how some of
their supporters are behaving.
This week, a Sanders fan created the “Superdelegate Hit List,” a website to compile the contact
information of superdelegates.
I’m getting calls on my personal cell phone from people all over the country.
They said, um, you know, you should go to hell. How dare you vote against your own interests
as an African-American woman.
Hey, cool the harassment. These aren’t female games. They’re actual people. Look, do you
even know what Super Delegates are? I didn’t. That’s why we had to go away for two weeks.
I’ll try to compress it to two minutes. First of all, political parties aren’t the
government. They’re semi-private clubs. If they wanted, they could use a sorting hat
to pick their nominees. Gah! Slytherin. In the eighteen hundreds, party officials would
just gather in a snuff bar and nominate the guy with the best facial hair. Which, admit
it, Brooklyn for Bernie, you can get behind. Primaries didn’t exist until the invention
of the automobile, because where would you have put your bumper stickers before that?
And party elites still controlled the nomination until nineteen sixty-eight, when primary voters
cast their ballots for anti-Vietnam war candidates, and the Democratic party said, “Mmmm…
thank you so much. We’ve decided to go in another direction.” Long-time Full Frontal
viewers may remember that night.
Dig it beautiful people! I’m Sammy Bee live in Chicago, where my husband’s letting me
report from the Democratic national convention. What a gas! Man, I’ve got a heavy trip to
lay on the two-thirds of democrats who voted for anti-war candidates. The “nom” just
went to Hubert Humphrey, the establishment cat who didn’t run in a single primary,
and got all his delegates from party big-wigs. Far out!
What did that chick say? Humphrey’s the nominee? What?
Oh my god.
U.S.A. Vietnam!
Oh no! What have I done? [Screams]
We won’t go!
Someone call the [indistinguishable]
Ah, sixty-eight. Yeah. I believe that was the summer I had a fling with that hunky musician.
Whatever happened to him? To avoid another riot, the democratic party changed their rules
to give power to the people. Which the people celebrated by dropping a shit ton of acid
with Hunter S. Thompson and nominating George McGovern who went on to a resounding general
election victory in D.C. and Massachusetts. Four years later they picked saintly, ahead
of his time Jimmy Carter, who only won because his opponent, Gerald Ford, was the harlequin
to Nixon’s joker. And four years after that, Ted Kennedy waged a brutal primary challenge
that left Carter as weak and defenseless as a woman left to drown in an oldsmobile. Sorry,
guys. Ted Kennedy did a bad thing. The democratic party had O.D.’d on democracy. God, even
their overdoses are boring. So, in nineteen eighty-two, the grown-ups said, “Enough.
From now on, democatic governors, members of Congress, and party movers and shakers
get a say in the process. And we shall call you Ex Officio delegates. That way, everyone
who speaks Latin will know how you got this job. Normal people will call you superdelegates
and have no idea.”
These people are like political wizards. They have the power to support any candidate they
want. Like the great and powerful Oz, these superdelegates are pulling the levers of power
in your political party.
You do realize the whole point was that Oz wasn’t powerful, right? Oz is just a midwestern
snake oil salesman displaced to a fantasy land full of cowards, heartless people, and
straw men. Sound familiar? Superdelegates’ only job is to act in the best interest of
the party. That’s why they have never tried to override the will of the voters. Not because
they care about us -- they don’t. But because pissing off the voters is bad for their party,
remember? [70s clip] 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. So, if they’re not going to subvert the
will of the people, what’s the point of superdelegates? Think of them as the driving
instructor which her foot hovering over the break. She’ll only use her power if the
party is about to do a Thelma and Louise. Like, if hypothetically John Edwards had been
in the lead when this turn dropped on the eve of the ‘08 convention.
John Edwards admitted today that he had an extra-marital affair while his wife was battling
cancer.
Oh, he’s gross. The point is, when democratic voters have cause to regret their choice,
superdelegates can help them fix it. They aren’t there to help them fix it! They aren’t
there to protect democrats from someone like this, they’re there to protect them from
someone like this. Believe me, Republicans would give their left nut for superdelegates
right now. So, democrats, when some jackass goads you into drunk-dialing a superdelegate
in the middle of the night, instead of saying, “Hey bitch, switch your vote,” say, “hey
bitch, thank you.” We’ll be right back.