Here’s a question for everyone to think of today, as we’re awaiting news on our next party chair from the smoke-filled halls of a hotel in Atlanta.
How many people do we think should get a vote? 477, or 4,770,000?
Right now, it’s 477 and only 477.
There’s been lots of debate about the race, and plenty of strong feelings, but almost no discussion over whether this crazy process is even the way we should be doing it — especially for a party supposedly of the grassroots.
And especially of a race that’s generated enough interest and headlines for a freaking CNN debate.
Here’s a change I think the Democratic Party should make: Instead of having 477 people vote for our party chair, do what the UK Labour Party does and put the thing up to a general vote.
Furthermore, as a party that I think should completely reject corporate money, let’s move the Democrats to a model where we tie voting to an annual dues. Have a $25 annual dues, and mail everyone who pays their dues a ballot.
Think of how this Party Chair race would be playing out differently if that was the model. Instead of people fearing and dreading the choice, feeling like it was completely out of their hands, they’d be registering as Democrats and paying their $25 dues. Instead of having party big wigs capping each other at the knees, we’d be having them campaign their constituents and fans to register as Democrats and pay their $25.
Imagine how many people would be writing checks, taking out their credit cards and registering as Democrats if Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were emailing all their supporters with their endorsements, with links on how to vote?
A lot.
If a million people voted, that’s $25 million in party resources (minus expenses). That’s enough to provide each state party $15,000 a month in funding to help establish a 50 state plan, and *still* have about $15 million for other DNC expenses, including targeted campaigns.
Even if only 250,000 paid the first time, that’s $9 million, which could pay that $15,000/month figure to state parties (if barely).
Heck, if Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama — as well as every prominent Democrat across the country — all had their choices, and campaigned their lists hard, maybe we hit that 4,770,000 figure — or $119,250,000.
That sounds like the beginnings of a grassroots revolution to me.
And it would build a small dollar grassroots funding model, with a strong list of donors to come back to every election time (or even on a monthly basis), one that could compete with the GOP’s big edge corporate funding.
But the big, important thing — for any of this to really work — is the party would actually have to cater to the people, and not the big banks or billionaire donors.
Yet, if we really make that commitment, make people a real part of the process –and show that their support has value — we wouldn’t need to, either. And instead of this party chair fight being seen as something that saps energy, it would be something that drives it — and channels it as a device to power the party to victory in every state and at every level.
Since this is a debate worth having. I largely agree with your analysis of what’s not working now, but your proposed solution isn’t really working for U.K. Labour either. It’s tipped the balance so far in the other direction that it’s elected officials and long time grassroots members have been entirely sidelined.
It’s also difficult to compare our system to theirs since the party leader is also the head of government or head of the opposition-so Corbyn is Pelosi and Ellison rolled into one with a chance of becoming President.
Voters should definitely have the final say in who their party nominates as President-a relatively recent innovation and a welcome one. So I’d favor a broad series of reforms to effect that end (eliminate super delegates, eliminate caucuses, mandate open primaries, and mandate proportional allocation). I would not favor electing chairs or party leaders in Congress via a popular vote-especially an online one like Labour has which is laughably easy for outsiders to hijack (which they totally have). The idea of relying on the internet in any capacity for an internal party election should be thrown out entirely in a post-hacking DNC.
Is that the membership is deciding the leader of their representation in a legislative body.
If Corbyn was just the party leader by the party’s membership, and only had control over the party apparatus, none of the UK Labour’s issues would be real issues now.
The corporate wing of Labour might be miffed, but it wouldn’t be the holy war that it is for them, and while Corbyn would have less power than he does now, he’d be in a position to make the changes necessary to transition Labour back to its working class roots.
So, I wouldn’t support a party wide voting mechanism that would decide who are leaders in the Senate and House should be… but I’d love to see our party give its members that control for the party apparatus.
If a party leader is on track to be the head of the government for a country it seems to me it makes more ethical and political sense to expand the franchise. National party chairs, OTOH, are strictly internal officers of the party with no automatic position in the counsels of government.
I’m inclined to reward the people who go through the drudgery of town committees and state committees and other trappings of long-time activism, but this would be an interesting way to do it.
because their long-time activism would get them votes, or give them constituencies to influence the vote.
” The answer to the problems of democracy is more democracy.”
Fred Rich LaRiccia
You’re kidding, right?
something along that effect. We can pick a label for it later.
But, yes, I do. And, in return, I expect those dues to have a lot of value in return — not just to vote for something like party chair, but with other perks and decision making power (for example, we could put some special projects up for a vote, as decided by the members).
As someone who’s ridden the economic rollercoaster more than I’d care in my life (good times and bad), I’m all for this change — just like I was all for Senator Warren and Senator Sanders eschewing a few big corporate donors in favor of lots of $27 donations.
If we look at things, there are two problems right now in the Democratic Party.
1. Not enough people feel they have a say — maybe even most people.
2. Lobbyists, millionaires and billionaires are the party’s most valued income source…. and expect to be listened to. (Likely including in the race for Party Chair.)
Unfortunately, both of these issues are two sides of the same coin. The party can’t listen to it’s working class members as much as it should because it can’t afford to piss off the big donors, and it can’t stop listening to the big donors on anything and everything they want until there are other viable income streams.
My suggestion is a low bar of entry for a large majority of the population, but that would collectively be enough to replace the DNC’s big money contributions. It’s also empowering our middle and working class members, even as it’s asking them to step up more.
But Bernie and Elizabeth both asked their supporters to do the same, and showed it could be done. And not only was it successful, both Senators were rewarded in taking that leap of faith by raising record amounts of money. Most importantly, their supporters have been rewarded in their investments with two politicians they know they can count on to represent their interests, and not the corporations.
Finally, the party has a long history of helping out students, seniors and others with economic hardships. Town and Ward committees frequently let people get by with reduced or no dues for those who can’t afford to pay, and the state party does the same for state convention fees.
Of course, we should do the same for any annual dues. My diary was only the start of a discussion, not the end.
…dues for the privilege of registering with a party – talk about being more exclusive. I think the party can and should try to replicate Sanders’ fundraising model, but that’s a different discussion.
Where did I say we should charge dues for registering for the party? Not even sure that would be legal.
I suggested an open process and a dues model for some kind of level of membership to the DNC. That is NOT party registration.
Right now, to vote for Party Chair, one must spend thousands of dollars in plane ticket and hotel costs, after however many thousands (and in some cases, millions) they’ve donated to democratic causes (in money or at the very least opportunity cost) in a lifetime to have the kind of platform to even be in the position of being one of the 477 on the DNC.
$25 seems rather a lot more inclusive to me, particularly when I wrote that we should “of course” provide any assistance for those who couldn’t afford that $25.
Did you even read anything I said, Christopher?
You were talking about low bars for entry and how there could be waivers, so I thought that is where you were going. I can see dues for DNC, and you have a very valid point about the expense, which is basically THE reason I can’t consider running for it myself. I wish the state party would foot the bill for their DNC members.
Glad it was a misunderstanding.
And the cost of attending something like this is such a huge barrier that IMO it’s hard to argue it wouldn’t impact the vote, especially one as narrow as this was, and especially when one candidate’s base of support is the labor community.
This is why I think the more we democratize the party, the better.
Bodies should be allowed to choose their own presiding officer, and parties are republican rather than democratic as they should be IMO. I could see an argument for the national convention rather than just the national committee choosing the chair, but let’s face it, in the scheme of things the vast majority are neither going to care nor have the information on who can best run a party. Next there will be pressure to open to non-Democrats or very recent Dems, but I don’t want party officers chosen by people who just showed up yesterday. Parties mean something; membership means something; institutional integrity means something. I am not at all convinced the current system is broken, and no, your not getting your way is not enough evidence for that argument.
Um, you were just complaining about how many people on your FB feed were outraged about the outcome last night.
Clearly, a lot of people cared.
As for the rest of your comment, I understand that you love the Governor’s Council and wish we still had British kings and queens, so I know you’re a stickler for old fashioned structures.
You also have a conflict of interest as a DSC member, who would lose some say if the party membership at large were given more.
What I do know is that far, far, far more democrats would choose to be involved in an easy, simple democratic process than be able to figure out when that super obscure caucus to attend a caucus to attend a caucus to be able to vote at a committee or convention they could never afford to be at will be.
A lot of people cared, but those are squawkers on FB. If you stopped most people on the street and asked who just got elected DNC chair you would probably still get 9 out of 10 dumb looks.
Don’t know what monarchy or the Governor’s Council have to do with this, though I do tend to be a disciple of Aristotilean politics with appropriately balanced roles for the many, the few, and the one.
I believed these things about how the party works before I was DSC too, thank you very much. Your swipe at my integrity was uncalled for. I stand by my previous comments to the effect that if you want more say, get involved. Since I’m not a DNC member either I also do not expect a say in who is the chair of a body of which I am not a member.
Could you be more insulting?
I stopped reading there.
n/t
One thing about at-large elections: the winner is not really accountable to anyone until the next election, and a win is often interpreted as a mandate where none exists.
I don’t think the party chair needs that kind of independence and authority. I also infer that Rye imagines a high level of interest by the rank and file in this position generally and will be disappointed—I think this year is a really outlier in that respect. We need to fight the next war, not the previous one.
So this is a prescription, most of the time, to make this decision in a power vacuum, in an election in which 0.001% of eligible voters cast ballots. Much mischief could ensure.
Now if the proposal is to recast our party system in parliamentary terms, with the party chair as presidential nominee-apparent, complete with shadow cabinet—well, that is an interesting idea.
But as things stand right now, I think the position calls for competent technician more than a future standard bearer.
I have no doubt that interest would fluctuate widely. But I do think it would be much greater if members had a vote.
Also, note, I think any system like this would have to come with more perks and decisions than just Party Chair, to get large numbers of people interested in being a dues-paying member. One idea would be to put some real decision making power in the process for other things, like having the DNC create various projects that could be funded through the $25 fee and letting people vote on it. And I’d have district-specific ballots, to open up the voting for DNC for that group of 477, who could then be ‘executive’ members, which could help get people active locally and offline.
The various committees are, or at least should be, the pre-eminent activists at that particular level of the polity, so it makes sense that they are also the governors of the party. Now I do wish there were more overlap, but that is another issue.
Also, I don’t expect, and I’m not sure I want, people to flock to the party because they like how we conduct internal business. I’d prefer that voters considering party affiliation would join us (or the GOP for that matter) because they agree with the party on the various issues of public policy. THEN if they have ideas for how the party can better operate internally get involved and make changes from within and of course give input via primary elections as to our candidates for public office.
The final advantage at least in MA to our caucuses is that it focuses activism, recruits volunteers, and yes, strengthens the party. We would miss this, I think if we reduced every choice to the very impersonal show up, cast your vote, and leave method of selecting our nominees.
… it’s possible to go wrong by giving too little power to the party rite rather than too much. That’s true for Democrats too. The Ellison/Perez battle may have been mostly a proxy batte about symbolism rather than a real battenabout policy, but taking Ryan’s view, why not just eliminate the Convention and have a party plebiscite on everything? (Or a plebiscite open only to dues-paying members)? To say “the answer to democracy is more democracy,” as a commenter says here, is to ignore the complexity of political leadership in a democracy, which shapes as well as being shaped by public opinion, and seriously overestimates the ability of people to make good political decisions in a “consumer” setting like a voting booth (“which do you prefer?”) rather than in a deliberative setting (a town meeting) or by electing people to deliberate and make decisions on their behalf, always with one eye of course on their voters’ views. I don’t have a strong view about this particular outcome, but I think making such a change as Ryan suggests would be a mistake.
“Battle” for “batte”
Stupid iPhone.
and belong to a party?
At least half of the populace, if not more chooses not to enroll in a party. Is that because they don’t feel that the party represents them? I’ve talked to some people who feel that way, the most vociferous being a libertarian who sent me an article on how democracy has failed. The others can’t be bothered to develop a ideological view deep enough to choose sides.
And Bernie Sanders is NOT a Democrat. Yeah, he caucuses with us, but he chose to enroll and then unenroll from the Democratic Party. He’s not a registered Democrat. Yet he would tell the party who should chair it. There’s something ironic about Bernie.
The Democratic Party is, for better or worse, a party. It’s a weird amalgam of public and private that follows our country’s system of representative democracy. That representative system reflects most of the problems our representative republic faces–low turnout, lack of enthusiasm, lack of thoughtfulness. Increasing the number of people voting on DNC chair (how many of them could actually name the last two DNC chairs or explain what they do?) wouldn’t increase choice, but it wouldn’t increase informed choice. It would probably cost more money to run for the job. People would be inclined to vote for the biggest name. In short, the quantity of democracy doesn’t necessarily improve the quality of democracy.
The whole contest for chair seemed much ado about not very much. Perez is in charge of fundraising and recruiting and supporting Democratic candidates. The question is, what will his strategy be? I expect he will respect the leftward movement of the party.
…the average voter probably sees the advantage of being unenrolled as the ability to choose a primary ballot on an ad hoc basis, whereas the privilege of caucusing or serving on party committees is not incentive enough to join for most voters. In Sanders’ slight defense I don’t believer Vermonters register by party, though he could accept a Dem nomination for Senate next time to show his commitment to the party.
Maybe it would be if you advertised the benefits more and made inclusion a top priority they would care? I would think you’d be excited about the prospect of more people wanting to participate at this level and would encourage it.
There is a party apparatus.
Sanders WAS a Democrat in order to run for President. He then switched back.
Never said “I am a Democrat,” did he?
The media at least continued to refer to him as “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Democratic presidential candidate”.
He couldn’t run as a Democrat in the presidential primary without being a Democrat. Now he wants to tell the party what to do, though he’s not actually a party member.
Here’s what he did. Politifact spends a lot of the article trying to make it look normal for someone to switch into and out of the party like that, but it’s pretty weird for American party politics to do what he did.
Bernie’s a better Democrat than many on Capital Hill and most on Beacon Hill in terms of the issues and the passion he brings. Millions of registered Democrats and independents alike voted for him and it’s their voices Ellison represented-who was also backed but Warren and Schumer who are strong Democratic leaders. Schumer trusts Bernie with a leadership position.
This is the same kind of sour grapes Ellison supporters have toward Perez. I have yet to hear anyone here complain about the registration of Angus King or call for him to be primaried-even though he is essentially the same kind of duck. We need independents to win elections, and Bernie’s run inspired many of them to become Democrats or at least vote in our primary. At a time when we need all hands on deck I’m really tired of this hand wringing.
He did exactly what we begged Nader to do and why some still give him shit over this technicality is beyond me.
We can’t have it both ways. It sounds an awful lot like we’re saying “He’s a Democrat when we agree with what he says, and he’s not a Democrat when we don’t”. For better or worse, Bernie Sanders has self-identified as Democrat when it suits him and in other ways when it does not. I don’t read Mark’s comments as “sour grapes”. I don’t remember Angus King seeking the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.
I think we need to decide whether not being a member of the Democratic Party means anything. I think that has to do with values and priorities — and when sincere has very little to do with elections won or lost or with which party holds the Oval Office.
Nobody ever wondered what party Ted Kennedy was from. Or Jimmy Carter. Or BIll Clinton. Or Barack Obama. Or Jack Kennedy. Or Lyndon Johnson.
Whatever this is, I think Mark’s concern is legitimate, and I think your “sour-grapes” characterization is an over-reach.
All of us celebrated when Jim Jefford’s became an independent and caucuses with the Republicans and Ted Kennedy gave up his seat as ranking member of the Education Committee to give his new caucus mate the chair in the new majority. Did he grumble he did register as a Democrat or did he embrace his ally and focus on fighting the Bush agenda that pushed Jeffords out of the GOP in the first place? We literally lack the luxury as you point out tobitch and moan about something so trivial when the stakes are so high.
He ran as a Democrat for President so as not to divide the progressive vote in the general. He’s the opposite of Nader. He is treated like a Democrat for all intensive purposes as a member of the Senate and by our leaders in the Senate. He and Angus King both come from states that have a tradition of electing independents and I welcome progressive independents as allies to this cause whether they formally register or not.
I don’t see how we hope to win over the majority of unenrolled voters in this state by shutting them out of the process and bullying the most progressive member of Congress in the country to conform. The progressive movement is bigger than the Democratic Party. I’ll always vote for a progressive over a conservative no matter what party-I’m afraid using your logic Joe Manchin is a better presidential nominee than Sanders despite a Republican voting record.
Inclusivity is the name of the game. You’re an avowed agnostic and your Episcopalian parish doesn’t check your denominational loyalty card at the door or the communion rail. The fact that mine does is a major barrier to my wife’s participation in the Eucharist. You all remind me of the. I ships tryif to stop Francis from granting communion to the remarried. What matters is where hey are in their journey today. And that’s what should matter to this movement.
So does Joe Manchin. Sanders is an FDR Democrat who ran a great campaign within the party to advance those principles and is now working within and without the party to continue the same fight. His principles are consistently progressive-something we can’t say about half the Democrats in our own state let alone across the country.
I have a lot of green and independent friends who are now becoming Democrats because of Sanders. So did Rand Wilson. You all forget there is a viable and inspiring progressive third party in Vermont that Sanders also participates in. Being a registered independent allows him to build the VPP locally while also working with the Democrats nationally. I don’t see why giving him they flexibility is such a big deal-especially since he ran for President within the primary to avoid the spoiler effect.
The VPP coordinate strategy strategy avoids electing Republicans.
I agree with you about all of this.
I’m just quibbling with your “sour grapes” characterization of the comment from Mark upthread.
If it’s not relevant and it doesn’t matter to the future of the party why keep bringing it up? It’s a recycled attack Clinton and her surrogates used from the primary “he’s not a real Democrat”. To which most voters say “who cares?”.
I think the sooner the Democratic Party aligns itself with the progressive movement and vice a versa the better. We cannot afford internal divisions over style rather than substance. There are good reasons unique to the politics of his state and his allies outside the Democratic Party to have that registration-it has zero relevance on his national work to reform the party and make it more inclusive and progressive. And the millions of independents who voted in our primary and who felt empowered to be part of our party ought to be welcolmed.
Francis is wisely viewing communion as the start rather than the end of the spiritual journey of conversion. It’s medicine for the penitent sinner rather than a reward for the righteous. Similarly, people have been burned by our party in the past and need a gentle hand to guide them to it rather than a harsh Donatism.
I’m glad Sanders ran in our party rather than pull a Nader and I’m glad our party allowed that. However, I think he should join the party if he wants a say long term in our operations.
Obviously, but I don’t view it as disqualifying or view it as nullifying his supporters desire to see his principles and people he endorses brought into the DNC. I really don’t see it worthy of a primary challenge or the kind of attacks it has gotten consistently around here.
and caucusing. They aren’t interchangeable.
I haven’t said anything about a primary challenge or really attack Bernie. Why are you including me in them?
It’s not like Bernie’s someone who spent his entire career following principles outside the party, took over the party, and is now steering the party in a dramatically different ideological direction like another outsider who won the presidency as a Republican last cycle.
And the fact that Trump could do it and Bernie nearly did it shows you that parties really are increasingly irrelevant. The way to make them relevant again is to make them relevant to the people that aren’t in them right now, including the majority of Bay Staters and Americans in neither party.
We do this by having clear principles, a clear vision for the country, and clean elections. I think Sanders and Ellison believe in that vision-Perez to his credit has articulated it as well. I know dozens of people who stayed in or joined the party for the first time because Bernie gave them hope something bold was still possible. I think we should embrace that bold vision rather than fret about whether it’s officially sanctioned by the official organs of an official party that has failed at epic proportions at all levels of government.
How come Bernie gets to have it both ways? Columnists write “Where are the Democrats on this?” and he has an out. Jerks like us complain about the party, and he has an out.
Once he decided to run on our ticket, he should have become a permanent member. On the flipside, Joe Lieberman shoulld have accepted his Democratic primary loss.
When they served together according to your standards Lieberman was the better Democrat; despite the record Sanders has. It doesn’t bother his supporters or his voting base in Vermont and is entirely irrelevant to the conversation of how we shape our party. Maybe by making the process fairer and more inclusive it’ll be a party worthy of Sanders and the progressives who remain unenrolled. I’ll do that work on the inside as I’ve done it n the inside. My loyalty is to a cause not a clique.
Access to pay raises, parking spaces and chairmanships they wouldn’t get if they were forced to register with the party they actually vote with.
But so what?
If we’re talking about building the party, we have to build the party. Values is certainly one key, but actual registration and participation matter as well.
If we have the right principles the “brand” of the party will be that if independent minded progressives banding together to do the right thing rather than hacks of all ideological stripes working within the system to profit off of it. How is this hard to understand?
When the DLC made the party of Roosevelt the party of Wall Street we hemorrhaged unionized workers (our bedrock base), southern and midwestern farmers (also a bedrock base) and gained the money to win an occasional dollar for dollar national advertising race.
The trade offs were not worth it. Instead of making clean elections front and center we put reform on the back burner every year in the name of “winning”. Instead of having reliable grassroots organizations we have single candidate organizations and a hodge lodge of special interest groups loyal to their issues first (remember when PP backed Republican incumbents in 2006?)
But relying on that atrophied our grassroots. They right has conservative churches and the religious right to continue that on the ground and corporate money to win the war on the air. What do we have? Our own policies tailored for the donor class made organizing our party harder by wiping out unions and doing little to advance reforms that actually make our country a better democracy. No action on killing the EC, no action on gerrymandering since Pelosi and Mike Madigan like it in their states, no action on expanding voting rights just a rearguard that failed.
And corporate Democrats were responsible for all of that, which is why the majority of progressive activists I know are lukewarm or not even in the party. To make them valued members you bring people like Bernie in, on their time table not yours, and make them feel valued. The Perez counterinsurgency and continuing to harp on Bernie’s registration are counter productive own goals that needlessly prevent the movement and the party from merging. And believe me they need to merge-third parties don’t work. But if you want one of the two parties to be responsive it has to make the first moves at reform rather than ask the movement to keep making concessions to be at the table.
I agree with you generally that our right-ward shift has been tragic for us, and worse for working people.
But you can’t really pin all that on the DLC. Another factor is union membership, which has declined dramatically.
The corporate shift within the party was also an abandonment of labor and embracing of the neoliberal policies that have been busting labor for 30+ years.
But even saying “within the party” overstates the case. It was most explicitly the DLC, which unfortunately had outsize influence.
But getting back to the point of party building: people “solved” the money problem, but not the people problem.
The claim
is complex enough for a PhD thesis, which I’m sure you haven’t written and doubly sure I don’t want to read. But riddle me this: when did this occur? Give me a date, a time period, an era, a something. Exactly when did the DLC make the party of Roosevelt the party of Wall Street?
…but I suspect the “when” answer for many will be circa 1992. Clinton had been DLC chair prior to running and is (in)famous for tacking to the center.
I’m not hand wringing or eat sour grapes. If you just don’t want to talk about it fine. I don’t think I’m damaging party unity by talking about it in the comments on BMG.
I don’t care about Bernie’s candidacy, but it means something that he’s not a Democrat. What does it mean? It says something about party politics that someone who doesn’t want to be a Democrat went into and out of our party just to run for president. It’s significant. What does it mean? That’s the question. My feelings really don’t much enter into it.
What just happened between Perez and Ellison was a power struggle between the left-wing of our party and the rest of the party. Period. The left-wing came close and thought they had more power than they had. Now it’s over.
If I run for office, get elected, vote to de-regulate the banks, increase restrictions on welfare recipients, weaken the power of labor versus capital, but I am a registered Democrat, well yeah, I am a Democrat.
What if I am a independent, but vote to strengthen labor’s position on collective bargaining, strengthen Social Security, and put the hammer down on banks….
As a voter who is registered Democrat, do I vote for the former and not the latter because “he’s a Democrat” and the other is not?
As an active party member, you try to build and change the party.
The two are related, but not identical. I’m a Democrat, a DTC chair, an occasional convention-goer. In a small way, I work to build and support the party. I haven’t involved myself like Christoper or Sco, but with some organization, my DTC might start doing more about electing our state committee members. Most, if not all, elected Democrats at the state and national level work with the Democratic Party.
Does Bernie Sanders? If not, why not? And all that crap about Vermont’s registration doesn’t hold water.
Why not just ask, instead of framing him as some kind of usurping villain?
Because the answer is yes, he’s helped the party a lot. Including before he was ever a presidential candidate.
He’s helped raise plenty of dough for Democrats, went all across the country for Hillary, is starting Our Revolution to focus on electing progressive Democrats (my friend won a State Senate in RI with that help), and had a long history of assisting the DSCC, including speaking at their fundraisers – which he was attacked for during the primary campaign by many Democrats, because when tribalism exists, people will fund any reason to cast aspersions on someone, including supporting the organization responsible for electing Democrats in the Senate.
And yes, that’s what this is. Tribalism.
Most importantly, he got many, many people to register as Democrats this campaign and to care about voting and politics – the kinds of people who would feel pretty alienated reading the kind of attacks you’ve written on this thread.
Apologies for my frustrations, but the continued attacks on Bernie are ridiculous and doing no one any good.
sensitive. Ridiculously so. Attacks? Seriously? I’m relitigating the primary? Where? People would feel alienated by my BMG comment? This is bullshit.
I admit I’m pushing, but you misunderstand me if you think I care about the primary or about Bernie’s running in it. Bernie had a right to do it, people obviously appreciated the fact and supported him. That’s what mattered. Honestly, it seems like you and James can’t break free from the primary. I suspect you two are more frustrated with the party not clearly turning left, though you would know better than I.
JTM’s answer actually helped me clarify the issue. Your answer actually goes farther in helping define it. I’m not saying Bernie was wrong to run as a Democrat or that he didn’t work hard for Clinton’s and other candidate’s elections. I’m questioning why he withdrew from the party and what it means to what a party is. I also don’t understand why he withdrew.
Is being a Democrat merely calling yourself a Democrat? Being part of the Democratic Party establishment, which is bad, according to (I think) you and many Ellison supporters, but who is the establishment? People who run the Democratic Party? People who have worked and invested their time in it? They shouldn’t be able to vote for the candidate of their choice?
One way to think about choosing the DNC chair might be to look at how we do it at the state level. Is the process better or worse? Why not? I don’t know the answers to this.
I’ll drop the issue. I seriously don’t understand you or James on this.
1) The DNC Race
I don’t care nearly as much about the DNC race as Ryan does, and I didn’t support either Ellison or Perez. But Ryan’s best point in that discussion was that the party refused to ban corporate lobbyists from leadership-and I would argue those leaders are a bigger threat to the direction of the party than the fact that Bernie Sanders isn’t a registered Democrat
2) It was used as a line of attack in the primary
It was a line of attack used repeatedly by Clinton and her surrogates throughout the primary and was a weak line then and an irrelevant question to ask now.
3) Who’s the sensitive one?
We’re over the primary and worked our asses for Clinton. Yet others keep relitigating it by blaming Sanders, blaming Stein, blaming his or her supporters and lumping them together or asking why he has the gall to support a DNC candidate while not being registered. Jim even proposed promarying him which was the worst idea I’ve seen in BMG-and we’ve had another stupid thread discussing secession recently. So I don’t know why he’s not registered-I also don’t care. Neither do most voters. So why do you and others keep bringing it up? That’s relitigating the primary. Email Bernie-I know one of his staffers and can arrange that. Otherwise let’s focus on how to beat Trump and elect progressives.
4) Worrying about the party moving left
It moves left or Trump wins. Even if you’re not a leftist if you oppose Trump you have to get on board with this agenda. I was far more uncomfortable with Sanders on foreign policy and health care-but his message is the electable one now. Calm centrists are losing all over Europe and Latin America-people burned by globalization want a fighter not a wonk. Warren is a fighter and a wonk and we can all agree left or Coakley was a winner for her while just Coakley was a two time loser. We beat Charlie and Donald by moving left-not playing for a center that doesn’t exist anymore.
for your liking.
I wouldn’t call myself a centrist. My goals are probably as progressive as yours and Ryan’s. I think we disagree about means.
Oddly enough, a colleague (history, AP Gov) and I were talking about this in the copy room this morning. He said he was a Leftist, but he wanted things to actually happen. Neither of us thought the party could do without corporate donations.
…but I would not be comfortable banning outright any person from leadership in the party based on what there day job, such as corporate lobbyist, is. If, say, the MA DSC elected someone to the DNC who is in that line of work it would be unfair if that person cannot seek leadership. In a similar position is health care executive Jim Roosevelt (FDR’s grandson) who IS very active in DNC operations as Rules Committee chair, but has rendered great service to the state party over the years as parliamentarian and legal counsel. It would make more sense and be fairer, I think, to refuse contributions from certain sources, though even then there is a concern of unilateral disarmament. DNC leadership doesn’t write the platform anyway. That job is for delegates with strong influence from the presidential nominee. The current national platform is already quite progressive with input from both Clinton and Sanders folks.
A simple question I have yet to see any answer on. You’re welcome to ask him why-I don’t know but speculated that he has allies in two Vermont parties and wants to keep working inside and out to help them. So far no rebuttal to that. Just repetition of how important the party is-well it didn’t seem to be a barrier to the 47% of primary voters who voted for him. It wasn’t a barrier to the primary voters that nominated Trump.
So maybe parties aren’t relevant anymore-and maybe that’s a problem we can use the example of Sanders and his surprising staying power to solve. His joining, rejoining or bolting the party isn’t relevant to that conversation or to his liberal leadership. But it’s a symptom of a party system that is dying-mainly because it’s too complicated to join and continues to be unwelcoming to outsiders. Maybe address that issue instead? Maybe we can find common ground on that? I’m not taking this personally at all-if anything you guys are the ones who seem highly offended that he left your party.
Bernie’s whole career is based on not being a Democrat. Then he ran for President on our ticket. What was the un-Cola? (Don’t answer — no free ads.)
His brand, if you will, if “Something different.”
It’s not the biggest deal in the world, but it’s absolutely something, and it matters.
Just ask Deval, Obama or Trump for that matter. Did you know Obama was registered in the New Party in the 1990s which was a progressive alternative to the Daley Democrats? It was even overtly socialist too-but the only people bringing it up were the Clinton’s in that primary and the Republicans in the general. Nobody cared-especially the Democrats who saw a talent when they saw one.
Maybe y’all should embrace the wave of new supporters and office holders like Mike Connolly he is bringing into the process. If he runs for President again (he won’t have my vote-too old and I want new faces) he will run as a Democrat. Case closed.
If they join a major political party and make use of its hard-earned national apparatus.
n/t
For the love of God, stop re-litigating the primary and alienating allies.
Let’s be constructive!
Just taking the piss, as my Irish coworkers used to say. Blog and let blog …
No matter how much money they give us.
Accepting their help, and representing their interests, has been a losing political strategy for 30 years.
But I don’t think it’s fair to call that an entire wing of the party. Yes the party always divides in two and the (so-called) centrists end up with big bank support, but that doesn’t define them or us.
The party is larger and broader than that. I once heard Jim McGovern said the Democratic Party would be eight parties in Europe.
Remember they have a robust left of center statewide party called the VPP many of his supporters and allies are formally registered in. Being an independent gives him the flexibility to help them at the state level while working with Democrats at the national level.
They don’t want the prix fixe where they can’t substitute onion rings for the fries. They want one from column A and one from column B with 99 cents add-on.
Not that long ago, a pro-life Catholic held statewide office as a Democrat. Today, Tom Reilly would be lucky to be allowed to register as one. Both sides have allowed their outliers to become purity police to enforce a Procrustean agenda, and most ordinary humans are not that orthodox in their beliefs and wants.
Why sign up for a side when the process has become a struggle to court you only if you haven’t?
…they can work from the inside to keep the party from lurching to extremes.
As Mass. voters, we’re ignored by both sides.
Tom Reilly was indeed a “pro-life Catholic”. He also did absolutely NOTHING about the clergy sex abuse tragedy. Nothing. He lost a lot of votes because of that. The state chose Deval Patrick instead. Mr. Patrick was hardly an “outlier”. There were no “purity police” and no “Procrustean agenda” (whatever THAT is for the Democrats).
Frankly, if you’re looking for examples of a party dominated by a “Procrustean agenda”, the Massachusetts GOP is a far easier fit. When was the last time a GOP official stood up and said “I think we need to raise taxes on the wealthy”?
The attacks on choice, contraceptives, gay marriage, and a VERY long list of other social issues originate from the Procrustean Agenda of the Massachusetts GOP.
When was the last time a prominent key Massachusetts official stood up and said “I think we need to raise taxes on the wealthy”?
millionaires tax. My state senator is one. They voted for a constitutional amendment to allow it to happen.
http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/05/massachusetts_legislature_vote.html
DeLeo also said he hadn’t shut the door on new revenue this year.
One good example was then-Governor Deval Patrick in his 2013 State-of-the-state address (emphasis mine):
The effect of this would have been to increase taxes on high-income families.
Your attempted conflation of the Massachusetts Democratic Party and the Massachusetts GOP fails. The two parties are not the same.
Massachusetts Democrats have been standing up to advocate taxes on the wealthy for a very long time. I invite you to offer any prominent key Massachusetts Republican who proposes anything remotely comparable.
The only time the Democratic Party mentions “grass roots” is when they need people to give up their weekends and canvass door to door and help the party insiders get elected. At least, that’s how I’ve been feeling lately. Grass roots get trampled on.
…neighbors calling and door-knocking neighbors IS the very definition of grassroots, which is a strategy I have seen used by both insiders and outsiders, and if anything often more effectively by the latter.
The party has to keep the grassroots activated for party building even when there isn’t campaigning to do. A middle school classmate who moved to
Philly is doing canvassing in the West Philly burbs that voted for Trump to introduce the Democratic Party to those areas and ask what voters there are concerned about. It’s empathetic rather than confrontational and is a great way to both gather data on what issues are actually important to voters and also give them a friendly face that even Fox News can’t villianize.
grass and set seed in the party.
1. Have 50 Democratic state conventions,
2. Let every state delegate have a vote, and
3. Weigh the votes appropriately (since CA has 45x the population of WY but not 45x the number of state delegates).
I understand ryepower’s concerns about such a small number of people choosing. I think of the DNC chair as someone with skills that voters can’t necessarily measure or have good experience valuing, so I’m not on board. Nevertheless, if ryepower thinks that more voters makes for a better DNC choice, I submit: why not open it up to state delegates? This gets us to what, something like 10,000 people plus or minus? And, if other states are like MA, we are paying for the vote!
…I think makes more sense and would be easier to execute, though a Chair elected at the convention should assume office after the presidential election.
In the spectrum between [all Dems vote] and [435 Dems vote] the National Convention is closer to what we have now, and is clearly full of party insiders. The state conventions, on the other hand, are decidedly not full of party insiders, at least if my community’s 3-4 dozen delegates are representative of insider/outsider status.
people too. I didn’t ask for specifics. One of my friends likes Charlie Baker. For all intents and purposes, she’s a Democrat, but she feels a conflict.
One thing people don’t seem to understand: parties are diverse. You’re not going to agree with everyone or everything in the party. How many Catholics believe and follow all church doctrine? In my experience, not that many. Eighty percent use birth control. That’s my view of belonging to a party. It’s not strict adherence to a party line, but sharing enough to belong.
I know this is unlikely, but it is possible that a large group of GOP voters could register Dem to affect a chair’s election. That’s another reason to have only party activists voting.
Or, you know … Russian hackers.
The former happened with the Labour election and the latter is the big reason I don’t like an online election with a low entry fee.
There’s a great New Yorker piece that I’ll give its own thread at some point-but they successfully infiltrated Bernie groups and the Stein campaign to peddle fake news to discredit Clinton and serve the Russian narrative.
and probably to some extent the Clinton campaign. They’ve been doing this stuff since forever.
Stein was a real asshole showing up at the RT Gala.
Some FSB agents gave away flash drives as part of a fake promotion and so many military officials took them with them and used them for classified stuff *facepalm*
Maybe THEY would have voted Ellison…
It’s much easier to alter the outcome in a group of 477 than a number much higher than that.
(And yes, there were quite a number of lobbyists, party vendors, etc, in that 477. I noted a number of them on the earlier party chair diary. It was enough to make the difference in the outcome.)
There are ways to safeguard against party switching shenanigans, so I’m not worried about them. Or we could go with something like stomv’s suggestion. Anything that makes it more democratic and grassrootsy is fine with me.
caucus: at least half in attendance had no political involvement prior to President Trump.
What happened: A few folks from our committee started Western Mass Indivisible Coalition. They invited people to our caucus. I didn’t count to see if they outnumbered us regulars. I think our convention slate is all new people.
I’m now the DTC chair, and we plan to work together with Indivisible on some activities. Most, if not all, of these people were registered Independents. Some of them were changing their status at the caucus! This is a promising development.
It was not an easy decision for some members to make that rule change. It passed narrowly in the Rules committee and many of us were afraid the DSC as a whole would reject it. I’ve heard from members who thought it was foolish because Republicans would come in and brigade the caucuses.
Please tell your DSC members about your success! There may be objections to on-site registrations during a nominating year.
I was confused about not being able to vote if you voted for other than a Democrat in our last election. Our caucus chair was unsure, so I’m unclear what the rules said.
It didn’t matter practically speaking, but how would anyone know if I had voted for Trump?
I am one who has had my concerns about last minute party-switchers who may not be sincere. However, the ban against public support for a non-Democrat in the most recent 2-4 years depending on the office is still in place, so if you had a yard sign or bumper sticker for Trump or donated to his campaign you are open to having your credentials challenged.
Individual persons make political donations. My spouse gave $X to the Hillary Clinton for POTUS 2016 campaign. It’s right there in the public record.
There was a Clinton for President sign in our yard. Was it mine? Hers? Ours? Good luck with that.
Just because you’re challenged doesn’t mean you’ll be ruled against, but some players like to gum up the works because they can. Locally, there’s always the possibility that your brother was the GOP state rep candidate or something like that. I think you would be forgiven for supporting a member of your own family.
He’s not just looking like a Democrat in governance. He’s looking like he’s building the party too. If he’s walking the walk, I don’t care about the talk (declaring himself a Democrat).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/02/26/dnc-race-in-rear-view-bernie-sanders-heads-to-kansas-to-rip-republican-policies/?utm_term=.ca8c119833af