Proposed DNC Rule Aimed at Sanders; Ignores Superdelegates & Corruption
Friday, the DNC Rules and Bylaws committee proposed a rules change for the 2020 campaign. The new rule is directed straight at Bernie Sanders:
The new rule specifically requires that someone running for president must declare in writing his or herself as a member of the Democratic party and that they will run and serve as a Democrat. Easy, right? Not so fast. The two party system in the US is cemented in place by statute, creating an almost impenetrable wall to outsiders. Party primaries are paid for by the taxpayers, and getting on the ballot in all the states as an independent presidential candidate is virtually impossible. Because of this, the only realistic path to the presidency is as insurgency in one of the two entrenched political parties. You saw that in spades in 2016 where Trump used his television persona to hijack the GOP and Sanders’ grass roots campaign almost uprooted Hillary’s coronation.
This rule seeks to stifle competition for the nomination, all while DNC political operatives are loudly denying that fact, which is as obvious to normal people as a hillbilly at a Newport garden party. Even while these operatives are all sniffy that outsiders understand their actual intent, Sanders supporters aren’t happy. Mark Lonabaugh, a senior Sanders advisor, call the new resolution “stunning”.
Someday, establishment Dems will have to face the fact that they are way out of step with their constituents. The Sanders phenomenon should have shaken these pillars of the party to the core, but it didn’t. They are ignoring, at their own peril, the 13 million voters, many first time voters, who went for the tottering old candidate from Vermont instead of the tottering old candidate from New York, Chicago, Arkansas (pick your accent). He brought a message of social justice, equity, and fairness that the Dems abandoned in the 1990s. And it appears that, rather than learning from that experience, the DNC is trying to keep it from happening again by further rigging the rules in favor of the establishment.
Oh, and one last thing – While the DNC specifically designed a rule to keep out insurgents, there are no adopted rule changes to eliminate or significantly reduce the influence of superdelegates, and no rule that prevents a presidential candidate from controlling the national party until AFTER they are nominated. It appears the Democratic party is the LEAST democratic organization in US politics, and that should piss you off.
Crone is correct. I was a delegate at the 2016 Texas Democratic convention, and what her son told her was absolutely true.
PLUS –
After losing floor vote after floor vote after floor vote, in the last hour of the convention, when people were leaving for the long drive home, sending word to their delegates to NOT leave, but instead to wait in the corridor outside the main room so it LOOKED like they were leaving as well, then rushing back into the almost empty hall and pushing through a rat’s nest of resolutions and platform amendments.
Frankly, it’s the kind of shit that Republicans pull when there’s not enough of them to win.
1@Msb – 1) Everything in this post is absolutely true; your loyalty to a particular political personality doesn’t make truth into falsehood. 2) Sanders was not my candidate. 3) This rule change was proposed ON FRIDAY, and needed to be exposed. 4) The DNC continues to shoot itself in the foot because it is lead by tone deaf morons who don’t get it. The Democratic Party is not a club. It has ONE PURPOSE, and that is winning elections. Rigging the game to protect weak and/or unpopular candidates is not a winning strategy.
Lastly, making this about gender is YOUR problem, not mine.
21. Nope.
32. News to me. Every post of yours that mentions him is unhinged.
3. Keep expressing your opinion. I’ll express mine.
4. That is not an answer to my question. Can you answer it?
@msb – 1) What in the post is false? 2) Then you’re not paying attention. 3) Yes, but opinions need to be fact based. If they’re not fact based, then you are a Republican. 4) Hillary was an AWFUL candidate, and consensus opinion outside of her of loyalists agrees with that conclusion. You made this about gender, not me. That’s called deflection. Gender has nothing to do with truth.
4El Jefe: You treat Sanders as a genuine grassroots campaign, and you treat the grassroots Clinton supporters as ignorant, idiot lockstepping Dems who don’t care about anything progressive, and were having a “coronation.” EFF that. You ignore the GRASSROOTS support of Clinton (and why do you still insist on calling her Hillary, and Sanders by his last name? That’s sexist in and of itself.)
Nobody told me I had to support Clinton. I followed both carefully through their early campaigns in 2015 and then into the primaries. I supported Clinton because of her knowledge base, her skills, her experience; I quit listening to Sanders when I realized what a one-trick pony he was. You seem to be fixated on the white vote, especially the young white vote, rather than the strong coalition that supported Clinton *because she was a better candidate. Because Sanders was crap with Black voters.
But you keep bearing down on how awful SHE was and how HE could’ve won. Really? Nothing would’ve made Black voters vote for a man who hadn’t ever really done anything for civil rights, who had voted *against* bills they considered important, who didn’t want to involve identity politics because the only thing he had to talk about was taking down banks and big corporations. Which is something some white voters care more about than voting rights. Clinton had 90% of the skillset and knowledge a president needs. Sanders had less than ten. And you’re still knocking Clinton. You just can’t quit knocking her, and defending Sanders, a year and a half after the election.
And you say “gender has nothing to do with truth?” That’s both arrogant and ignorant. Gender has EVERYTHING to do with truth. Gender is not a fiction and gender bias is something half the world deals with every single day. Talking about gender is “deflection” only to a male sexist. Race has EVERYTHING to do with truth. Racism is not a fiction, something every person of color has to deal it with every single day. Talking about race is not “deflection” except to a white person. In this case particularly, because the FACT is that from the way the media reported her campaign to the voting split by gender and race to the way the Russian campaign against her was framed, was all about those two things, predominantly gender.
Here’s deflection: you, after more than a year, still insisting on trashing Clinton and Clinton supporters. That’s deflection. You want facts: face those. You want another? Clinton was not an AWFUL candidate (boy, you really hate her, always having to stress that) but (like every candidate) imperfect. Clinton was the candidate that brought the Black vote to the Democrats, solidly and decisively in the popular count. Pretty damn good for a rich white woman. She got almost half of the white women’s vote. But white men? Eeeuw, a smart woman, I can’t stand her. “Consensus opinion” that she was awful? Consensus opinion of whites, and specifically white men. That’s a fact you have to face, too.
I have never seen you express anything but strong dislike of Clinton, never seen you give a fair assessment of her skillset, her knowledge, and by the way her ability to win the popular vote (and no, don’t explain to me again about the Electoral College–yes, I know, yes, I studied it in school. Yes, I know the popular vote doesn’t count in this country. But it does count in showing that Clinton was not in fact an awful candidate.) I’m not making this about gender or race: I’m making it about you, because you have yet to treat women voters, or women candidates, with respect. Your reply to Msb is typical of your condescending attitude.
I don’t like the DNC much either, but I do think no one should be allowed to run *as a Democrat* who isn’t one. After all, Sanders and Stein both received help from the Russian effort to defeat Clinton, just as Trump did. Is that what you want, a bunch of o-wow-they’re-*outsiders*- and-they-have-*grassroots* being pushed by a foreign power to influence the election?
5Maybe we should consider LBJ’s wisdom, in commenting on J Edgar Hoover, but equally accurate regarding the Dem’s traditional big tent, “It’s probably better to have him inside the tent p!ssing out, than outside the tent p!ssing in.” Set aside the differences and p!ss on Republicans not fellow Democrats.
IN the end, Dems have to get along long enough to defeat the Republicans. In every race down to the dog catcher’s third assistant in some g*d-forsaken part of Ala-damn-bama.
6K- I am often in opposition to the DNC about one thing or another. But I am completely in support of not allowing anyone but Dems to run for office as Dems. I don’t consider that “corruption” at all; I consider it common sense. There are qualified candidates within the Democratic Party.
When you say the DNC is “offending and punishing OUR friends and allies while comforting and embracing OUR foes,” emphasis added, I wonder exactly who you are considering in that plural “OUR”. Because I have been a Democrat most of my life, a voter since age 21 (the legal voting age then), and until health overtook me, much more active in politics than I am now. And yet I think a rule to keep the Dem ballot limited to actual Democrats is a good idea. If you consider me one of the “foes”, you are presuming to know my position on multiple issues that I think you really do not know.
I oppose institutional and everyday racism. I oppose institutional and everyday sexism. I oppose institutional and everyday ageism. I have seen the bad effects of all these, repeatedly. I recognize intersectionality as an issue. As a veteran, I hold by my oath to uphold and defend the Constitution (and, in my day, we had a Constitution requirement for HS graduation.) That means attacks on *any* part of the Constitution (such as have been constant in this Administration, too often successful because of the complicit and cowardly GOPoliticians in Congress) get my immediate attention and opposition. I am in favor of higher tax rates for the wealthy, good public schools and universities, science-based policies for public health, environmental, occupational safety, and anything else the government is doing, whether for the benefit of all or a segment. Universal medical care, including specifically women’s right to control their own fertility without political interference. I want my tax money spent on things that benefit the citizens of this country, from the bottom up. Clean water, clean air, nontoxic foods, safe as possible transportation, decent housing, etc, etc. Banking regulations, yes: because banks have shown their unwillingness to really police themselves. Minimum wage laws that actually ensure a living wage to every worker, regardless of age, sex, race, religion, etc. Regulation of law enforcement because, like banks, the police do not regulate themselves. And so on. So if I”m the kind of Democrat you think of as a foe…watch out.
7Elizabeth Moon –
You’re my heroine.
8I wish that YOU were running for something!
So Ms.Moon you support the idea of allowing turncoat rethuglicans running as d’s before the ink is even dry on their altered voter registration after they have spent a lifetime in opposition to all the values you cited as being a d with no guareentee that they have ddropped those delusions instead of having a progressive who in disgust of the corporate politics played by the Dccc et.al. had run as an indepedent but has promoted the issues you cited?
9So which should be banned our friends who spent a life time promoting an agenda of democratic issues or a turncoat adopting the d title as a matter of convienience but still adhereing to reactionary delusions of rethuglican ideology?
That is the question.
Right now the dnc seems to be targeting our friends, in the sense of people who agree with the d agenda but are disgusted by the corporate stooges running the party. While not just welcoming but recruiting and promoting r’s who want to be a corporate stooge and still adhere to r fantasies.
That is what I mean by punishing our friends while comforting and promoting our enemies.
Want to ban outsiders running Fine. Then also do something about banning those who just see the d line on the ballot as just another way to promote r ideology.
Can I be the capstone here? If there’s a “D” on the ballot, they get my loyalty and my vote.
And a “D” isn’t a man, or a woman, but a candidate of my party.
10That was what Phil Gramm was counting on just before he stabbed Clinton admin in the back and returned to his true party after gutting texas d party.
11@elizabethmoon – All due respect, but you are transferring a lot onto me that I haven’t said. I’ve never said anything about Hillary’s grassroots campaign (oh and she called her own campaign Hillary for President with a giant H and rightward facing arrow as her logo, so spare me the sexist accusation). I never questioned her qualifications – she was infinitely qualified. I said she was an awful CANDIDATE. She was a terrible speaker, uninspiring, and ranted like a teabagger until Sanders got in and pulled her back into the fairway. Outside of her loyalists, these facts are widely acknowledged. I also never said Sanders would have won. I didn’t support Sanders, either, even though I voted for him in the primary. My candidate, Biden, didn’t run, so I had no dog in this hunt, but ultimately held my nose and pushed the button for Hillary because she was my only choice.
Since 2015, I have pounded on the facts, and continue to pound on the facts that Hillary was a terrible candidate who hijacked the DNC, installed her campaign co-chair as DNC chair, and paid off superdelegates to commit BEFORE THE PRIMARIES EVEN STARTED. That record is clear and undisputed. Also, the management of the DNC and her campaign was incompetent and insecure. Even when the FBI warned the DNC and her campaign that they were subjects of foreign hackers, she completely ignored those warnings. Her staffers actively sabotaged Sanders campaign, even spreading disinformation about him. That disinformation continues TODAY from loyalists.
Hillary would have won the primary without cheating, but she allowed it anyway. That’s a character flaw. She didn’t even dump Debbie Wasserman Schultz until her corruption was so obvious that it threatened the viability of the convention itself. The entire enterprise was shameful, and the public record of that is perfectly clear.
Why did she lose? 1) She was a terrible candidate and turnout was down percentage wise across the board; 2) There was a lot of meddling by the Russians and others, and that’s a certainty; 3) She bungled the swing states. Even with all that, she lost against the worst candidate in US history. It should have never been that close for meddling to be a factor.
Now, instead of fixing the super delegate problem and corruption at the DNC, what does the DNC do? Target outsiders like Sanders. And that should piss everyone off.
12Every thing El Jefe said is true, IMO.
It was going to be a dirty campaign going in. One would think after her experience with Richard Scaife, even tho he was dead, her campaign would have seen it coming.
13I don’t expect anyone to see this but….
14Look at Minn. D Senate primary.
A thuglican apperacheck is running as a D and getting support from “establishment” d’s.
Richard Painter who was a member of the twits administration with the title of ethics officer, as if any junta with that cast of liars, frauds, crooks, megalamaniacs and empire builders had any idea of what ethics even are.
Where are the purists decrying a non d running as a d?
The establishment d’s are willing to ban Bernie, and his supporters from running but welcome with open arms a good thuglican apolagist for the 2nd worst president in history and with the instigation of the iraq conquest creator of worst foriegn policy disaster, until demented donnie showed up, in history.
So where are the purist claiming only a d should run while welcoming this fifth columnist into the fold?