Can anyone confirm this? I could forgive the operative bit, but if this is true, I know the operatives are just cover for the lobbyists. WTF?
The Democratic Party this week plans to name 75 people including lobbyists and political operatives to leadership posts that come with superdelegate votes at its next presidential convention, potentially aggravating old intraparty tensions as it struggles to confront President Donald Trump.
The new members-at-large of the Democratic National Committee will vote on party rules and in 2020 will be convention delegates free to vote for a primary candidate of their choice. They include lobbyists for Venezuela’s national petroleum company and for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., according to a list obtained by Bloomberg News. At least three of the people worked for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in 2016 while also casting ballots as superdelegates.
I saw an article on the Intercept (the Greenwald joint) w/r/t this and thought I’d wait for confirmation from a more reputable source. So yeah this doesn’t seem good.
Well, I don’t like the idea of discriminating against people for the work they do either. This amounts to a relative handful of votes at convention and at-large members are generally chosen for their previous party activism.
It’s de facto discrimination.
How many of those superdelegates don’t have a college degree? How many wake up every day to back pain because the physical labor of their job, be it from changing sheets at a hotel or lifting luggage on the tarmac or whatever? How many are single parents and don’t have a nanny, au pair, or any other hired help? How many have a net worth of less than $100,000? How many are women (hint: in 2016 it was only 42%)?
Your statement is akin to saying that the law prohibiting sleeping under the highway overpasses doesn’t discriminate because it applies to the rich and poor equally.
The Democratic party should work to make the collective demographics of the superdelegates more like the collective demographics of America. I can assure you that adding more beltway lobbyists in no way moves the group in the direction of the vast majority of voters in Massachusetts, Michigan, or Missouri.
Um, the whole point of at-large members is to make the membership of the DNC more diverse. I still say there should be no blanket exclusion based on employment.
If by diverse, you mean check the boxes for religion, gender, skin color, and -ability, then yeah, it’s better than just relying on our 2:1 ratio of white men in Congress and governor’s office.
But if by diverse you include economic diversity — which includes not just wages, but wealth, occupational autonomy, education levels, job security, and economic opportunity — then no, nawp, nada. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that the superdelegates actually have higher incomes than the electeds, with even more security, autonomy, and opportunity.
And yet you steadfastly support a system that, in practice, is remarkably exclusionary based on employment. Fact is, there are few if any superdelegates who are unemployed, underemployed, or otherwise worried about keeping a roof, any roof, over the head of themselves, their spouse, or their children in the next three months. Oh, virtually no middle classers either, now that I think about it.
Well, I certainly don’t know the bios of the individuals under consideration such that I can comment intelligently on that. The DNC members elected from MA at least are not superrich, though they do have to be able to fund their own trips to meetings and I wish the state party would support that financially.
I’m not entirely clear on how it is that not giving a person special privileges that no one else has is “discriminating.”
I have about as much use for Bloomberg as I do for Greenwald, but at the very least, the optics are bad. With that said, being a registered lobbyist sometimes means less than what it sounds like: many political operatives have jobs that require them to register as lobbyists.
For example, I once applied for a job with the MTA that would have required me to register as a lobbyist. If I had been chosen for that job–luckily, someone better qualified got it–I would have had to register as a lobbyist. I would have done some lobbying by talking to my elected officials about MTA positions. I still would have been chair of my Democratic Town Committee, which automatically grants me delegate status. There are obviously significant differences between being a delegate and a superdelegate. My point is, it may be more complicated than it looks.
Here’s a more trustworthy source, I think:
https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/07/28/influence-at-the-dnc-more-than-60-superdelegates-are-registered-lobbyists/
Actually, being a DTC chair does give you the state equivalent of superdelegate status at our conventions, if superdelegate is defined as one who gets a convention vote without having to be elected at a caucus. National convention superdelegates are DNC members and federal legislators with state party chairs being members of the DNC. Our state conventions likewise automatically credential local chairs, state legislators, and DSC members.
At least I’m elected at the local level.
Everyone is elected – some more directly than others, but that’s OK IMO.
TBD, do you disagree with my statement that everyone is elected, or do you wish more were elected more directly?
I have always found Bloomberg to be very good on the facts but I would never trust it for opinion. OTOH, their story this week was not as tough as it should have been on the moves by Perez if we can believe Vanity Fair, which has been great for more than a decade on politics.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/tom-perez-dnc-shake-up
Perez proposed a purge of Keith Ellison and Sanders supporters, who are to be replaced by industry lobbyists and Clinton loyalists:
The Dems are about to throw away both the VA Gov election and all of 2018 because it cannot get anybody to donate to the DNC.
There are multiples of reason why the rank and file, whether Clinton or Sanders’ supporters, are not giving. DWS almost killed the party. This move by Perez won’t reverse the trend.
Last year I thought that Perez should have been the VP nominee. My thoughts about him were wrong. If the Dems lose against this GOP over the next two years, it will be from self-inflicted wounds.
Let’s be clear about the varying definitions of lobbyists. MA state law has regulations about people who are either paid or spend a substantial part of their time, “legislative agents,” lobbying the state lege.
To answer Christopher, the existing ban on federal lobbyists taking federal jobs relates to their ties to their employing industry. Despite this obvious conflict of interest and the numerous waivers granted by Trump and the equally numerous violations of those laws, if you have read any of the national news stories (not the pathetic Globe), you would know that there is a huge battle about those lobbyists taking federal jobs.The fed gov’t ban does not include people who work at the state or local level. The Commonwealth does have laws about these kinds of conflicts of interests although the recent employment of Brian Dempsey by a lobbying firm shows that those laws, despite being tougher than federal laws, are inadequate.
The Democratic Party should have higher standards than the Trump administration if it wants to win elections.
I’m not sure what VF is talking about and in my experience the popular press is notorious for getting internal party politics and procedures wrong. The Chair can hire and fire staff, but cannot purge the national committee or unilaterally appoint members. It is for the DNC to fill its own vacancies and it takes a 2/3 vote to remove for such things as not supporting the nominee.
Also I completely understand the need for anti-revolving door laws in government and share your wish that they were stronger, but since the DNC is not the Politburo and does not actually make laws I’m less concerned in that context. Plus the DNC did also vote to ban contributions from interests whose agendae do not align with the platform.
Yet another reason for me to stop donating, canvassing, phone banking for Democrats….let the “super” Democrats do that.
I think the sooner we get rid of superdelegates, the better. Hillary supporters should agree as she won the popular vote and won a majority of regular delegates during the primary. The likelihood that our party nominates a racist unqualified demagogue like Trump is highly unlikely. The fact that he is “electable” under our system is proof that “electability” is a meaningless concept.
Let the candidate who wins the greatest number of primary votes and delegates win. And let every state hold an open primary with proportional allocation. Get rid of caucuses and get rid of closed primaries. Then the Democratic Party will actually be democratic, and it will strengthen our appeal to the non-affiliated and non-voting.
John, you should join the Raise Up coalition, if you’re interested in working on something.
They are working on issues you believe in.
I’d also recommend the DSA to John T May and others frustrated with regular party politics. They are really enthusiastic and a great group of people to grab a pint and hit the pavement with. The downside is a lot of them are younger than me, not familiar with the local scene, and its very Boston/Camberville centric. But I am sure you could start a Franklin chapter. Lot of Bernie supporters in Natick and Needham too. PM, OR, and DFA also come to mind.
I can identify the other acronyms, but am blanking on DSA. Also, was “Camberville” intentional?
Democratic Socialists of America; and yes — a portmanteau of Cambridge and Somerville.
OK TBD, why the heck the downrate on a comment that simply provided information?
Interesting phraseology.
If you actually CARE about the progressive agenda, an alternative is to give directly to candidates you support, and bypass the DNC altogether.
I stopped giving to the DNC years and years ago, after “Democrats” supported with funds from the DNC participated in the assault on women’s rights by joining with GOP right-wingers in demanding that anti-abortion provisions be in legislation sponsored by Democrats.
If it’s the behavior of the DNC that you dislike, then stop giving to the DNC. If it’s DEMOCRATS that you don’t like, then stop claiming to be one.
Or do both, that’s what I’ve done. There’s no reason to be enrolled in a party in an open primary state unless you want to be active in your DTC or the state convention. When I punch my MTA card I’ll rejoin the party, until then, leaving it formally hasn’t changed my politics or the kind of candidates I work for.
I stopped giving to the party when it used party funds to sabotage Sanders and promote Clinton prior to the results of the primary. There are lots of DEMOCRATS that I do not care for, like the ones who are against justice for the working class, like Hillary, and her ilk.
I think we are all acutely aware that “there lots of DEMOCRATS that [you] do not care for”. The point remains that if there are any Democrats that you DO care for, you can give directly to them.
I’m much more interested in who you support than who you oppose.
Even if you think this sort of thing is usually okay, it is emphatically the exact wrong thing for the current national moment.
I don’t think having the party appoint some delegates outside of of the state delegate-selection process is a bad idea, but it matters very much who they are.
I’d like to know more about specifically about who they are and their record of party activism rather than a knee-jerk freak-out about what they do for a living.
Gosh, I’d say that lobbying the government on behalf of certain corporate interests is not just a garden-variety “living.” It goes straight to the question of whom the party represents. Definitely I’m not so sanguine as you.
I think a lot of this controversy goes away if we just scrap superdelegates. The reason they exist is so our party does not nominage another McGovern, which we have never done since McGovern. It also does a disservice to McGovern who national campaign was knifed in utereo by Humphrey, Meaney, Eagleton, Teddy and many other establishment figures who didn’t give him a chance or wanted a shot in 76′. Democrats for Nixon was the original PUMA and if had a lot of overt and covert help from most of the DC Democrats.
People also forget the racist origin it had in thwarting a Jesse Jackson nomination and how it effectively kept Jackson off the ticket in 84′ when Hart proposed joining forces to overcome Mondales lead.
If we want to be seen as credible on reforms from gerrymandering to ending the Electoral College to defending voting rights we ought to consider starting in our own house. The superdelegates are an undemocratic holdover from the pre-primary era. End caucuses and closed primaries and make every contest proportional.
I so disagree on every point. This is a nomination process, not an election. There are rightfully three classes of party members, all with different perspectives on how the party should run and choose its leadership and candidates: The registered voters which make up the bulk of the party as they should; the DNC which governs and leads the party; and the elected officials who at least theoretically run on and implement the platform (and since candidates for President often come from their ranks have a different and valuable perspective about who might be the better nominee or President) Take these automatic seats away and they end up competing with and likely shoving aside regular voters and activists who want to go to convention. I prefer closed primaries to caucuses because of the time involved, but will defend the rights of state parties to make that decision, but definitely close the primaries and force people to take a side. I have yet to encounter an organization which does not restrict participation, especially in choosing leadership, to its members, and in MA which allows unenrolleds to vote in the presidential primary that means they get a say in choosing town and state committee members, which really makes no sense. Anyone who shares our principles is more than welcome to join the party – registration isn’t hard and there are no litmus tests – but the Democratic Party should be for DEMOCRATS. Unlike the Republicans, Democrats already do allocate their delegates proportionally.
That was a perfect Trump 2020 pitch. You really haven’t learned any of the lessons of 2016.
WHAT!? Nothing I said should lead anyone to vote for Trump, who clearly does not share our principles. I’m pretty sure nobody voted for him last time because they didn’t like our internal rules. The vast majority of people don’t know what our internal rules are. Plus, it’s not like the GOP doesn’t have its rules. In fact, they do allow for winner take all, which is a lot less representative than a few superdelegates. There’s something to be said for institutional integrity and I won’t sacrifice it to the noses of some who don’t understand party politics getting bent out of joint. Nothing I have said prevents anyone who truly wishes to from participating. You’re going to have to explain the logic a lot better than the drive-by comment above.
I think you are so inside the bubble that you forget that most voters in this state and across the country are ocassional voters at best and largely unaffiliated with either party. It’s those voters who see our party not acting democratically and think that their voice and votes don’t matter since it’s a Coke/Pepsi choice or just heard drain the swamp and saw us acting like the swamp.
Sure a lot of them regret their votes for Trump now, even more of them stayed home, but I doubt they are going to give to or support candidates the DNC wants with their votes or their time with this attitude and purge of meaningful outreach.
Bernie’s campaign single handedly brought tens of thousands of new people into the party, and the reaction to that is to censure Bernie for registering as an independent and keep his supporters away from the levers of power. Bernie is like most progressives I know-a Democrat on Election Day and an independent every other day of the year since modern big money party politics is freaking repellent and disgusting. I think we have to clean our own house first, so “pox on both houses” can finally stop. Trump got a lot of traction early on for being honest about how easy it wasn’t to buy politicians and how unbought he’d be in comparison.
Getting folks disgusted by both parties to become involved with the Democrats should be welcomed. But like the typical DTC, the DNC doesn’t want newcomers and fears any kind of proactive change that hurts existing stakeholders like the campaign consultants and fundraisers who make up the bulk of the DC political class.
I don’t know whom you’ve been talking to, but I and many others I know would love for Bernie supporters to come inside and join the party.
You reacted quite badly to a post where Jamie Eldridge explicitly inited them to do so and canvass for a progressive Democrat. Others react badly to the fact that he hasn’t registered as a Dem. If he did, they would find something else to complain about. There is a strong segment of our party that wants him and his movement to go away and they are entirely in the wrong.
The only reaction I recall having to Sen. Eldridge’s post is wondering why he was specifically calling on the Sanders wing once we had a nominee when all Dems should have been on board.
Which is exactly the problem I identified. You expect them to get in line without inviting them to have a seat at the table. And they are smart enough to know that.
I can’t tell for sure whom you are talking to since the comments don’t nest, but
.
is not an accurate reflection of my attitude.
Aww Christopher, you keep reverting back to the notion that any political party is a private organization and YOU ARE WRONG. The taxpayers of Massachusetts pay for the primary elections of all political parties, including the Democrats and Republicans, and in the past the Greens. Neither party pays a penny for those September primary elections nor the spring party town/ward committee elections, mostly when the vast majority of taxpayers don’t have enough interest to vote but still have to pay. The parties pay nothing. Nothing.
We allow those parties to automatically place candidates, within minimal limits of voter signatures, on state taxpayer funded ballots. If you want to be able to limit ballot access, either take the Dem Party off of the public ballot and do it all behind a convention, change state and federal law, or pay for every voter who shows up at the polls in a primary. Obviously the latter options suck, so let’s let the Dem Party be open, you know, kinda like a democracy.
When you write that
you are obviously not writing about an organization that owes its entire existence to a state protection plan
It’s a hybrid I admit, but as long as there are ways to get on the ballot that do not involve the parties I’m OK with that. There are also ways to achieve party status for which everyone follows the same rules. Plus, as long as every taxpayer/voter has the option to join a party I don’t feel the least bit guilty about the state paying for the election aspect of our business. The state does not pay for our caucuses or conventions.
Lol at that. The D and R wrote the rules and grandfathered themselves in. We made a lot of mistakes at the UIP and didn’t have the kind of money and manpower we needed to cross the 1% threshold-but nobody else has done it before and nobody ever will since it’s impossible. 5% statewide is a cycle where you run a no name to contest the lower tier offices to stay viable. And then you need to be certified in a presidential year when it’s all but impossible to keep your status without a presidential candidate on the ballot, which if you have one gets you attacked as a spoiler since it’s a first past the post system. It’s all but impossible to break this duopoly since the rules are rigged to maintain it.
No, the rules are the same. There is certainly advantage to long-standing tenure, but of Ds or Rs ever fall below the threshold that UIP couldn’t make, they would find themselves without party status too.
OK, bob-gardner, you’ve used up your downrates for my comments. Time to use your words!
Re “negative freak-out:” Sorry, Christopher, but this is not a time for business as usual.
This sort of stuff must not only be legit (which is also debatable), but be transparently and obviously so. So, burden of proof shifts to the corporate lobbyists crowd on this one, imo.
It’s not about whether its business as usual or not; it’s about being able to participate. If DNC members want to consider whether someone will be too tempted to let their work intrude on their political business when choosing colleagues, I guess that’s fine, but for me the burden falls on those calling for certain people to be excluded.
Sez you, Christopher, what it is and isn’t about.
I guess that is the heart of this disagreement: do the normal standards apply, or is this a crisis that demands a different approach?
So state your position pf course, but lay off the negative “freak-out” putdowns.
PS Google “caesar’s wife.”
Not really since you went on a real rant up there defending the right of your precious party to exclude whomever it wants from the process. Maybe it’s the age difference, but I honestly thought the party I originally signed up for was committed to democracy, transparency, and the working class. Not an insiders only club you have to jump through hoops and master arcana to participate in.
Also you realize 98% of voters regardless of affiliation have no idea who those delegates are or care about? It was fun seeing Joel Patterson’s name on my first ballot back in 2006, otherwise, I don’t know or care about any of those people and neither do most voters. Labour had an online poll instead of wasting money on sending delegates to a convention, it’s a really archaic system if you ask me.
I did NOT defend any prerogative to exclude people. I thought I made it very clear that anybody would be welcome to join the party! You don’t have to jump through any hoops. It’s no more difficult to register as a Dem than it is to register at all. Conventions are for getting activists energized and together, and yes conduct a bit of institutional business, but online polls are hardly reliable.
Remember that some of the hoops and arcana exist because of movements like the LaRouchites. *Some* gatekeeping might be called for … Not sure where I’d draw that line.
Even that example doesn’t really prove your point. Maybe the regular IL Democrats shouldn’t have run a candidate who’s father was a well known racist opponent of Harold Washington during the height of the council wars. Maybe those two primary candidates who lost to LaRochites should’ve done a better job campaigning downstate. If they lost to those folks in a primary they had no hope or business running in the general anyway.
Scott Lee Cohen also managed to win an LG race despite a history of criminal behavior toward women in 2010, and it was because he was the only candidate to make it to TV with ads touting his job creation skills. Their state does not have a 15% threshold of regular delegate endorsement to make it on the ballot and lower signature requirements. Now you have to run on a ticket before the primary which is even more confusing.
There are ways other than superdelegates to establish a gatekeeper. We have yet to encounter a single primary where they would’ve served a useful purpose, but every four years their presence casts doubt on the legitimacy of the nominee by the campaign that lost.
Teddy in 1980, Hart in 1984, Hillary in 2008 and Bernie in 2016 all played the electability cards to sway superdelegates to veto the will of primary voters. It didn’t happen in any of those cases, but had it does anyone honestly think it wouldn’t have been a massive disaster with the losing camp litigating and/or splitting off to run an independent campaign? What scenario does using them end well and help the party? I think that’s the standard to judge them by. Not the other party’s delusional voters selecting a mad man. That fact doesn’t undermine democracy, it just undermines the GOP as a rational party.
For the same reasons our country is not and should not be a democracy, but rather a republic. I think it is absolutely appropriate for party poohbahs to weigh in on electability and qualifications. The thumb on the scale isn’t that big and it actually paves the way for more grassroots participation. The only way they would override popular votes are if the vote is close and supers are overwhelmingly for one candidate. Besides, I hate to break it to you, but there is not fundamental right to participate in a nominating process at all. Direct primaries are barely 100 years old and being the overwhelming factor in determining the nominee is maybe 50.
I am well aware of that-but stop pretending that’s not an elitist and undemocratic process. If they ever out the thumbs on the scale in the modern era do you not think that would lead to a party split that makes 68′ look like a school committee meeting?
WHAT???
“Bernie in 2016 all played the electability cards to sway superdelegates to veto the will of primary voters”?
I don’t understand at all what you’re saying.
All I saw Mr. Sanders do in 2016 regarding superdelegates was oppose them when he thought he could win the primaries and court them when he realized he was losing the primaries.
I don’t see any “big picture” beyond simple self-interest.
That’s exactly what I was admonishing both campaigns for. Hillary played that card in 2008 and Bernie did in 2016. As long as they exist, campaigns will be tempted to appeal to them and if they ever succeed it’ll badly divide the party.
It’s also an appeal I am making to view this through the lens of democracy rather than personal preference. I didn’t vote for Hillary, but more primary voters selected her so she earned the nomination.
I don’t see what we gain with superdelegates from a principled standpoint or an electoral one. Our voters are highly unlikely to select a LaRochist or Trump style candidate at the presidential level. Having superdelegates overturn the will of primary voters to select a more conventional candidate would backfire like it did for Humphrey in 68′ and would’ve had they been employed in 84′, 08, or 16′.
Ok, fair enough.
I find it hard to see how, after the 2016 election, someone could think the answer is elimination of superdelegates, as suggested in various comments here. If anything, we should be encouraging the GOP to adopt the idea of superdelegates!
I take the opposite approach. Our primary process has repeatedly validated the intelligence and integrity of our voters, so let them have the ultimate say.
They do have the ultimate say with the possible exception of very specific and unlikely circumstances. For me, it’s not that I’m looking for the popular choice to be overridden; it’s that I just think in principle certain persons based on their role in the party should be able to cast their own votes independent of the electorate.
Then they can do so as regular delegates. There’s still nothing stopping regular delegates to be pledged to the popular vote winner in their states after the first ballot. I think you underestimate how badly this makes us look to unenrolled. Especially if we are now allowing open lobbyists in on the act as a transparently preemptive anti-Bernie move for 2020. If we didn’t have superdelegates all that DNC conspiracy theory and Demexit stuff wouldn’t have happened and with a margin of 71,000 votes in the four states that mattered we can’t afford any defections. You also underestimate how toxic the thumbs on the scale would be. The last time it happened we had a riot outside our convention.
Assuming the riot you refer to is Chicago 68, that was about the Vietnam War, you know, an actual issue! You are calling it a conspiracy theory yourself, which is my point. I don’t cave to conspiracy theories and I have no patience for the politics of appearances. How about we treat voters like adults and actually explain the process and give them the tools and knowledge to participate rather than dumb everything down?
I totally agree. How do we treat them like adults if we need superdelegates to act as gatekeepers or baby sitters for an electorate we claim to trust?
Because we teach them what their role really is and how to even become one if they are so inclined.
Also, you say as “regular delegates” – you do understand they don’t get additional votes, right? As delegates they are on equal footing with those elected, but if they compete for spots at national caucuses all that will accomplish is fewer opportunities for grassroots activists, which I doubt is what you want. Maybe we should get out of the habit of using the term superdelegates in favor of ex officio delegates since the prefix super- usually means over and above, which is not correct in this context.
I don’t appreciate the condescending tone. I am saying superdelegates are not pledged to a candidate and can switch their allegiance despite the will of the voters they are sent to the convention to represent. That is wrong. We should limit automatic delegates to members of congress and governors, but hold them to the same rules as a pledged delegate.
But they aren’t sent to represent anyone, except maybe in the indirect Burkean sense. You have just as much right to contact your members of Congress to try to get them to vote a certain way as you do for legislation. They have just as much right to likewise vote their conscience ultimately. You in turn have just as much right to consider how they voted in convention when determining whether you will support them in the future. You’re right, they aren’t pledged, or rather they aren’t bound since they may decide to pledge support early on their own. Elected delegates are supposed to represent the people, but I emphatically disagree with the idea that ex officio delegates should just do what they are told.
I’m not sure we’re talking about the same 2016 election cycle. We’re certainly don’t seem to be talking about the same Democratic primary.
The 2016 primary that I remember is a primary season where:
1. Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in most of the states that had actual primaries.
2. Bernie Sanders was opposed to super-delegates until those super-delegates were his only hope to stay alive. Then he courted them.
3. Bernie Sanders did best in the states that did NOT have primaries.
4. The outcome of the primary was known from very early on, and was NEVER competitive except in the media horse-race stories (which benefited from higher advertising rates during a competitive primary) and Sanders campaign press releases.
The plain truth is that Mr. Sanders did none of things a serious candidate has to do during the years leading up to the campaign. He was unprepared when he jumped in, unprepared for the debates, and failed to do much of anything except run a media campaign. His “movement” was and is all about Bernie Sanders and little more than that.
A significant piece of “all that DNC conspiracy theory and Demexit stuff” was nothing more than sour grapes by a small group of not-even-Democrats on behalf of a losing candidate. Bernie Sanders himself just announced that he’ll again run as an independent in 2018.
As Christopher observes, your attempt to compare the Democratic party today with the Democratic party of 1968 is misguided at best. Please allow me to offer a few highlights of 1968:
– A Democratic president was in the White House, running an immoral war that he lied about expanding
– Huge portions of the party were explicit southern racists who had just lost the civil rights battle, and were still resisting efforts to dismantle Jim Crow.
– The party’s leading primary candidate was assassinated in the middle of the primary season (while claiming victory in the California Democratic primary).
– The most prominent civil rights leader of a generation had just been assassinated
– The immoral war was fought by 18 year old draftees that could not vote
– The immoral war was fought by 18 year old draftees who were too poor or too black to escape the draft. Anybody who attended college was exempt. Anybody who could afford to hire a doctor was exempt (including Donald Trump).
There is simply no comparison, at all, between the Democratic Party of 1968 and of 2017. None.
6 6s for the above comment by STom!
I don’t disagree with any of that analysis and my only invocation of Sanders was to criticize him for appealing to superdelegates in the first place. I am saying if we reform the DNC and salvage its reputation we can repair a lot of the damage it caused in 2016. I don’t see Tom Perez fulfilling his mandate to do that by expanding superdelegates to include paid lobbyists when we ought to be eliminating them all together and norming open primaries over closed primaries and caucuses.
Can we please remember that Perez while no doubt influential does not simply appoint new DNC members? The DNC elects at-large members.
The point of having checks or breaks on the majority is that you don’t need them until you need them, and if you don’t have them when you need them it’s too late. That’s not just about superdelegates, by the way–it’s baked into the constitution in lots of ways.
And again, I don’t think they are really working are they? Lessig’s idiotic campaign to lobby electors failed. And the end of the day democracy was vindicated by 2016 since the sane candidate was the won who won the democratic election. It’s precisely the constitutional form of superdelegates in the form electors that lead to Trump. You’re entire argument is predicated on a falsehood.
Our party’s voters nominated a sane candidate and always have. A majority of our country voted for the sane candidate. It’s these elitist guard rails that fail us, not the other way around.
We’d have had gun control and single payer long ago if we didn’t have a Senate. We’d have had civil rights a lot sooner too.
The big problem with the electoral college is the winner-take-all by state allocation, which is actually much closer to the GOP nominating process, but the Dems already don’t allow. Plus, I expect actual elections that claim to reflect the popular will do actually do that. I do not necessarily expect that of partisan nominating procedures.
The big problem with the electoral college is the electoral college.
Did anyone else follow the link in the diary and scroll down to the story saying the DNC has also voted to ban donations from certain interests whose agendae conflict with the platform?
That’s like patting yourself on the back for driving past the streetwalkers while your on your way to score some heroin.
Well, I think the ban on money is a lot more substantive than discrimination against people.
“discrimination against people”? Do juries “discriminate against people” when they don’t let the defendant’s friends and relatives serve?
I’ve been downrating your comments because it seems to me that you are playing dumb. The reason to exclude lobbyists is that there is a conflict of interest. Someone who is paid to advocate for a company or a business association has a conflict between whatever opinions they have and the positions they are paid to advocate.
There is every reason to exclude people with conflicts of interest from being delegates. But that’s not even the question. The DNC is giving people with conflicts of interest a FREE RIDE. They are not even making these appointed representatives of special interests go through the same process, ie running on a slate of delegates that people can vote on in an election like they have in a democracy.
This is the simplest, easiest thing to understand.
The appearance of selling out to special interests is bad enough, but this is actual selling out to special interests.
But since they are not legislators all they can do is advocate. You can agree or not with me, but you should always assume I am being sincere. Jurors and legislators make binding decisions with real impact; party committee actions are almost always advisory with less direct impact. If I’m a lobbyist with a boatload of cash I can give the party, that might over-influence how the party will operate since if they don’t do what I want I can withhold my money which could hurt the party. However, if you say right off the bat you don’t want my money, but you are willing to seat me as a DNC member then sure, I could advocate until I’m blue in the face, but ultimately I’m just one vote out of 400+ at DNC meetings and one vote out of 4000+ at a national convention. The party can choose to listen to me or not without consequence. I don’t know about others, but I would take it a lot more personally and consider it more unfair if the party tells me it doesn’t want me than if it told me it just didn’t want my money.
This is evidence in support of pessimism for 2018 and 2020. Dems remain divided and, honestly, incoherent. They make a show of saying “resist!” and seem to be running left, sometimes all the way to open borders, on immigration, while at the same time trying to smother the only portion of the electorate that has any energy whatsoever in the Dem’s favor.
“Establishment” Democrats have fallen into the trap of old success, thinking that the successful strategy of 25 years ago is always the answer, and that it doesn’t matter what the problem is.
And all to protect the influence of the revered “poobahs” who have led the party to catastrophic failure after catastrophic failure for more than 10 years– a stream of fiascoes of which President Cheeto is only the most recent nadir. If Democrats ran the Red Sox, Grady Little would still be the manager, and he would still be running the exhausted arm of the 45-year-old Pedro out there to be shellacked.
Maybe they could keep the superdelegates, but somehow treat their collective input as The Esteemed Advice of a Collection of Extremely Incompetent People, so that the party might act accordingly, and have a prayer.
The Democrats divided stuff is unadulterated, conventional wisdom BS! You should get your facts right, or at least get some facts, Dad. This comment is worthy of Cokie Roberts.
Are Dems all on the same page? Of course not. Why should we be? We have competing interests.
Do we have an amazing number of candidates running for office all over the country? Yes. Have we won or done well in a large number of local, off-year elections. Yes. No one is being smothered.
What is it, do you think, that a political party should look like? And why do you think that this particular iteration of the Democratic party is different from most all other iterations of party since the founding of the Republic? That is to say, with the sole exception of the late-20th century, early-21st century lockstep Republicans….
We’ve seen what extreme party unity and party discipline can do… and the result of that is a Trump/Pence ticket: a one-way ticket to rock bottom. And, in fact, I would argue that the Republicans are, in fact, no longer a party, but an orthodoxy wearing a mask of party and thrashing indiscriminately hoping, now, to sate the insatiable anger they have awoken.
Should the Democrats do that? Should we be an orthodoxy? Or, put another way, which party is the outlier, here?
We are a political party. We are not Walmart. We don’t have a CEO who can dictate decisions when customers complain.
Political parties–at least ours–are representative democracies. They have all the problems of representative democracy. Like our country’s representative democracy it runs on laws, bylaws to be specific. Those laws include superdelegates. (I don’t know much beyond theory here, so do superdelegates vote on bylaws?)
To change the way the party is run, they have to elect new representation. That means they have to be committed to the party, be party active members, elect people they want. This is one of the reasons Bernie should have remained a Democrat.
People may not like the way the Democratic Party is run, but it is run democratically. I’m absolutely sure it’s not always run well or fairly. Democracy doesn’t guarantee anything efficiency or fairness. Superdelegates may militate against democracy, but so does a lack of participation by choice.
Sure, and instead of just complaining about Walmart, we should participate in corporate governance. And instead of complaining about Putin, we should emigrate to Russia, wangle our way into the politburo, and participate.
What the hell are you talking about, Mark? Are you saying that there is such a shortage of ordinary people in the Democratic party that Perez and co. have no other candidates besides the hacks and corporate lobbyists they installed?
Perez is just using the rules.
If people want new rules, change them. If they want to change them, they need to get involved in the party governance.
Have you always been abrasive?
My abrasiveness comes and goes. If it were Larouchites dominating the superdelegate process, or foreign agents linked to Russia, no one would take the “just using the rules” argument seriously.
Corporate lobbyists aren’t as bad as Russian agents, but they are bad enough. A DNC chair who cared about the success of the Democratic party, or more importantly, cared about progressive policies would not let them occupy positions of privilege in the party.
I don’t know the politics behind the Perez’s decision. I’m sure there were politics involved. It’s a cause for concern, but I don’t know why these particular people were chosen.
The “just the rules” argument as you call it is not an excuse for Perez; rules are a fact of life. If you have the rules, people are going to use them. They are the playing field. Blame Perez, by all means, but the playing field is ultimately the problem. Maybe the other guy would have done things differently, but the rules set the baseline for action.
I picture two long lines, one leading to a window titled “Change the Leaders”, and the other “Change the Rules”.
When you finally get to either window, you are informed that you have been standing in the wrong line.
Changing leaders matters, but so do changing rules. I think the last go round changed some things.
You may also find yourself standing in one line, while the other line makes changes on its own.
On the other hand, leaders can make things worse: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/tom-perez-dnc-shake-up
Larouchites have used the rules to get involved in the past, and their exploitation thereof has been an impetus to change the rules. I personally helped strengthen the rules of Young Dems of MA a few years ago as a result of exactly this situation.
And therein lies the irony of these arguments. We aren’t expected to participate in the governance of Russia or Walmart, whereas the very institution people are complaining about is the one which actually has the most access to people participating.
Superdelegates is a term that applies to conventions only, some of whom are such by virtue of being DNC members. There are ways to amend the charter and bylaws both by convention and the DNC or the DNC only.
DNC Purge?
The situation may be even worse than Jim’s post implies.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/21/1708732/-The-DNC-reshuffling-of-posts-and-purge-of-a-few-members
I’m not sure removing three members qualifies as a purge, but I did enjoy the poll, on which the options were “Yes” and “NO.” It;’s currently running 95-5 against adding lobbyists as supers.
Well, I feel the need to remind us that this page is pretty much a canonical push-poll. The page starts like this (emphasis mine):
Those who don’t share the view of “prettymeadow” fled the scene rather than click the scrollbar even once. Oh, and parenthetically speaking, what’s the relevance of the beautiful photo of “A shallow glacial lake in northern Idaho”?
I was reduced to searching DailyKos for info on the topic. Frankly, there wasn’t much on the subject.
I like as much info as I can get on most topics. On this one, it’s hard to know the internal politics.