The superdelegates thing, I think, has been fixed. I guess then they were counted beforehand or early on and now they're not? I'm only partial on that, and you may know better than I.
But as you acknowledge the RNC caved, the DNC didn't. And I don't think there's any way they would have, either. I'm still stunned, to this day, that the RNC just let decent, quality candidates fall by the wayside.
What do you see that the RNC did to "
just let decent, quality candidates fall by the wayside"? I didn't see it do anything. The out-of-character action would have been to do something to stop Trump. I can't remember when the honchos at the RNC had any influence on the result of the presidential nomination. And who are those honchos anyway? Not a Republican in a hundred could even name the head of the RNC, and I imagine the same is true of the DNC.
The congressional campaign committees, plus the candidates themselves, raise most of the money to fund congressional races, and the candidates themselves along with all the "un-affiliated" PACs raise most of the money for the presidential campaigns. The national committees just don't have that much influence, except for the appointment of super-delegates.
I don't know that the DNC has made any changes to the super-delegate system. The RNC has super-delegates too, but far fewer of them. I used to yuk it up that the Democratic Party was therefore less democratic. Now I think that they do it better, only not enough better. There should be more, not fewer, super-delegates, IMO.
Primary voters seldom represent the mainstream of either party. They consist mostly of the committed, even fanatical, supporters of their chosen candidate. Bernie had an army of them, especially in 2016. He got a far bigger share of the delegates than he would have gotten had there just been a poll--whether national or state-by-state--of all registered Democrats.
Again, I recommend this from
The Atlantic: "
Too Much Democracy is Bad for Democracy."