Alex Cyrus has produced an unfortunate article, "Democrats and Republicans are Different. That's Why Populism Doesn't Work on the Left."[1] It's written as a response to a recent op-ed by Bernie Sanders
in which the Vermont senator wrote about reforming corrupt practices
within the Democratic party. Cyrus didn't much care for that kind of
talk, but he isn't really equipped to comment on it either. That doesn't
stop him from doing so:
"To be honest, before the 2016 primary I had never voted in a primary, nor did I know, or care to know, anything about the process. I had never heard of a super-delegate."
Those
are the key lines in your piece here, as they establish early on that
you really have no idea what you're talking about, yet--like
Trump--you don't, for so much as a moment, let that restrain you from
loudly making all sorts of pronouncements on these things of which you
have no real understanding.
You
may, indeed "wonder what point there is to discussing the finer details
of how one Democratic presidential candidate is chosen over another
Democratic presidential candidate running on almost the exact same
platform," but any reasonably informed observer recognizes your premise
("almost the exact same platform") as laughably false and understands
very well why this is something that matters to any smart Democrat. The
2016 Democratic primary/caucus process was fundamentally corrupt and
people were and are quite put off by that sort of thing. Among other
things, it makes people stay home on election day or even vote for the
other party. "I'm pretty sure," you write, that Sanders is "actually
trying to hold up Donna Brazile's book as some sort of worthy endeavor
of truth-telling, in much the same way as Fox News" but contrary to what
the Clintonite smear-factory has been telling you for two weeks, Donna
Brazile is not the issue; her revelations are, and they've been independently confirmed by the press. The real press, not Fox News. You don't know anything
about this subject--you write "it's my understanding that the
financial arrangement Brazile was criticizing had already been out in
the media for over a year," which is entirely false but perhaps more
importantly here, you concede you don't even know.
The DNC bent over backward to try to tilt the primary/caucus process in
Clinton's favor and while we already knew Clinton was using state
parties as a front and laundering donations meant to aid them for use by her own campaign
via the DNC, what Brazile just publicly revealed for the first time was
that the DNC wasn't just aiding the Clinton campaign in utter violation
of its own bylaws, it was the
Clinton campaign. Clinton had used the DNC's debt at the beginning of
the presidential season to leverage a secret takeover. This DNC that was
so problematic had been the Clinton campaign all along.
Your
ignorance is on display throughout your piece.[2] You write, "Even at
Hillary's highest polling point, right after the Access Hollywood tape, I
remember reading that no one thought the Dems would take back the
House. That's chilling." But there's nothing chilling about that if you
understand the means by which Republicans hold a majority in the House:
through massive gerrymandering in various states. Like Clinton, they
gamed the rules to put themselves on top. And no, you can't be upset
about it when they do it but not when Clinton does it. On the question
of Democrats' massive losses over the last decade, you write, "What does
Sanders propose on this vital issue? Who knows." But you
would know if you'd ever listened to Sanders; he says Democrats have to
break with the bribery-and-donor-service system that presently dominates
politics and build, instead, a strong progressive movement that gives
people a reason to vote for and be loyal to Democrats. He even outlines
an ambitious legislative agenda that could be used to this end. By now,
Sanders watchers can probably recite his standard stump-speeches on this
by heart but you've never heard of it. "Who knows," indeed.
You try to transform Sanders' critique of the superdelegate system into some sort of attack on voters.
Sanders has made crystal-clear his objections. "[I]t is absurd," he
writes, "that the Democratic Party now gives over 700
superdelegates--almost one-third the number a presidential candidate
needs to win the nomination--the power to control the nominating
process and ignore the will of voters." Superdelegates aren't elected as
delegates by anyone but have the same voting power as tens of
thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of actual voters. Like an
utter political innocent, you ask, "But when have the super-delegates
ever overturned the 'will of the voters?'" Here's how superdelegates
worked last year: Sanders completely destroys Clinton in New Hampshire,
winning by 23%, the largest margin in the history of that primary, but
because the state's superdelegates support Clinton, Clinton is awarded a
tie with Sanders in the state delegate count, the thing that vote
was intended to settle. Sanders flattens Clinton in Wyoming, winning by
more than 11% but Clinton is awarded 11 delegates to Sanders' 7.
Unelected party insiders have been officially formed into a good ol'
boys club that is being used to erase the will of actual voters, which
is not only offensively anti-democratic in itself, it completely
destroys confidence in the process. For anyone who pays attention. In
criticizing the superdelegate system, Sanders is standing up for the
voters, not, as you would have it, attacking them. He has plenty of support in this as well.
You
offer no thoughts of your own when it comes to the superdelegate issue;
you merely throw baseless attacks at Sanders for wanting to be rid of
them, suggesting he's merely looking forward to some 2020 presidential
bid.
Another
of those items on which you're confused: "I'm also confused about the
purpose served by opening up the party primaries to non-Democrats."
Sanders made plain his own reason for advocating this:
"Our
job must be to reach out to independents and to young people and bring
them into the Democratic Party process. Independent voters are critical
to general election victories. Locking them out of primaries is a
pathway to failure."
You
characterize opening the closed primaries as "muddying the will of the
base" but at present, over 40% of Democrats--defined as those who
always vote Democratic--are independents. The spectacular lack of
wisdom inherent in locking out 4 of every 10 of your own party's base
voters shouldn't have to be explained. Those people will
be able to vote in the general. You offer the standard arguments
against open primaries and it's a matter on which people can
legitimately disagree but while you say you, personally would interfere
in open Republican primaries if given the chance, you'd be sacrificing
your right to chose your own party's candidate by doing so--you can't
vote in both contests. That's why few will take that course. At present,
23 states employ some form of open primary and seem to do just fine
with it.
To
Sanders' call for greater transparency in party finances, you write, "“what finances? Isn't the party in debt without a sous to its name?"
Again, Sanders is very clear on his objection. "Hundreds of millions of
dollars flow in and out of the Democratic National Committee with little
to no accountability," he writes. By the party bylaws, for example, the
officers of the DNC are supposed to be able to see the DNC budget and
get an evaluation of its performance. In practice, this has been
entirely ignored and, instead, the chairman has been treated like a
dictator, free to make whatever financial decisions he likes with no
transparency and no oversight. That's how, among other things, Debbie
Wasserman Schultz was able to sell the org to the Clinton campaign and
it was over two years before that became public knowledge. You ask,
"What further transparency do we need?" But there's no transparency now and hasn't been for years.
Again, you offer no real thoughts on this issue (another you don't even understand). You merely use this as an excuse to get in some further jabs at Sanders on some entirely irrelevant matters, writing that his suggestion for greater financial transparency in the DNC "is a strange request from someone who still won't release his own tax returns and whose own fundraising system is completely opaque." The release of tax returns is traditionally something done by presidential candidates and Sanders hasn't been one of those for over a year. Now, he's just a senator and senators, like congressmen, virtually never release their taxes. Sanders raises his money overwhelmingly from small donations from ordinary people. This is a thing to be praised and encouraged, not, as here, slighted in some cheap effort to defend corruption. For anyone curious about Sanders' personal finances, he issues a financial disclosure every year. They can be perused here.
You
offer a Trump-style persecution fantasy in insisting "the media refuses
to ever critique any of Bernie's statements on reforming the Democratic
Party." In the real world, of course, the corporate press largely
despises Sanders and rarely passes up an opportunity to attack and smear
him. Most of the proposals he's made in that op-ed won't get that
treatment precisely because they're so reasonable and sensible that few
will find cause to take any serious issue with them. It's unfortunate
that you've opted to take the side of the corruption Sanders is trying
to combat. "I've been a Democrat my whole life," you write, "but I've
never been worried about its future until now, and despite mostly
ignoring it up until now, I find myself moved to try to defend and
protect it." Throughout your article, you demonstrate how little
attention you've paid, even while piling on the snark and repeatedly
smearing a fellow merely for suggesting this mess needs to be reformed.
The Democratic party doesn't need your kind of "help."
--j.
---
[1] Cyrus uses this title but his article doesn't even address the matter.
[2]
A line about how Americans are "uncertain if the Russians are ever
going to let us pick the President again" is a deep dive into
tin-foil-hat territory.
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