Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Abolish The Goddamned Caucuses Redress The Objections Of That Most Loyal Group, The Congressional Black Caucus Or Prepare to Meet Disaster Face On

I am a life long Democrat, the son and grandson of life long Democrats, I don't know what the party affiliation of my ancestors back farther than that goes but most of those who were here and citizens were Irish from Massachusetts and other places in New England so I've got a good guess that they were members of the Democratic Party as well.   I've got a deep stake in the success of the Democratic Party and am always interested in its internal politics, though I have to admit I wasn't paying attention to the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Chicago which made the most sweeping change in the party rules governing presidential elections in a half century.   I didn't now about it till I did my semi daily check of the estimable Charles Pierce at Esquire where he wrote about his ambivalence about the results of that. 

He, as most of the people writing about it, concentrates on the de facto abandonment of the Super-delegate system that non-Democrat, Bernie Sanders' campaign made so much hay around in the last election to the enormous cost to the party, the country and the world.   While I also don't like the idea of the Super-delegates, most of them being of questionable status to hold such a position, their influence in actually determining the nomination was mostly a myth.  I would like someone to point to a single time that they swung the nomination to the person who didn't win the primaries and caucuses.

Oh, yes, the caucuses.  The goddamned caucuses which should have been abolished in the 19th century because those, the things which allowed Bernie Sanders and his followers to continue on, are blatantly anti-democratic and, as Pierce notes, unDemocratic, and an absymally awful way to pretend you're making a democratic choice for the presidential nomination.  I'd favor banning them altogether and won't stop speaking for their abolition on all of those bases, they are a prime vehicle - along with open primaries - for Republicans and Republican - now Putin sponsored spoilers to screw with the Democratic Party.  I was sitting next to the Bernie Sanders supporters table at our caucus in 2016, I heard the assholes who had minutes before changed their party affiliation from independent or Green (Greens always proudly announce their being part of that scumbag outfit) and heard them announce that if Bernie didn't get the nomination they would vote for Jill Stein. 

Abolish the goddamned caucuses, if state legislatures under Republican-fascist or deluded Democratic control won't do it through state law, the Democratic Party should make a rule that delegates chosen by caucus won't be seated and that those states will conduct Democrats ONLY primaries by mail-in ballot, on paper, with secure identification, etc.  No one who hasn't been a declared member of the Democratic Party for at least a half an hour before they cast a vote has any business choosing the Democratic Parties nominee for president.  If the idiot Republicans want to secure their nomination process against outsider ratfucking of the kind they conduct and sponsor, it's probably in their interest to do so.

The issues that are brought up in the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party lead to legitimate hard feelings among that most loyal, dependable, longstanding group in the Democratic Party, Black Voters, that alone will prove the Bernie bros and gals aren't worth it. I'd trade all of the Bernie or Busters of an increased incentive for Black Voters to turn out in the primaries and the election.  I said "Sanders Wing" but they're not a wing you can depend on to get you anywhere except backward.  The accounts of the Chicago meeting aren't encouraging on that issue.   There have to be not only attempts but real substantial provisions to honor and empower the long standing hard work of, most of all, the Congressional Black Caucus who are as disempowered by the "reform"of the Superdelegate system as the old white party hacks who have never been elected to public office, who lack that most legitimizing of all political credentials.  Many of the Bernie Sanders guys are legitimately seen as new white party hacks who have no more legitimacy, many less so, than the old white party hacks they whine about.

The effective addressing of the issues raised by the Congressional Black Caucus must not be put off.  That would be a far bigger disaster than having the Bernie Sanders faction do what they'll probably do when their guy doesn't win again, walk out and try to sandbag the legitimate nominee. 

Charles Pierce notes that the man who is certainly one of the two most decent of people to have ever gotten a major party nomination, George McGovern, admitted that the last reform he had such a major hand in had proven to be disastrous in the form of his disastrous run for president.  I think it's a cautionary tale on what happens when you listen to the whiny, undependable white, largely play-left. 

The other most decent man to have ever gotten a major party nomination was, of course, Jimmy Carter.  I remember the lefty-magazines and (mostly campus based) play-lefties were extremely resentful of Jimmy Carter and I'd guess a lot of them didn't vote for him, as, indeed, many of them voted for Barry Commoner in 1980 out of pique with the reality of Jimmy Carter as president.  I was one of those idiots who voted for Commoner that year, as I've said, I read the lefty-magazines.  I've gradually learned the lesson, through Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, now Trump, that anyone who gets the Democratic nomination must be supported no matter how pissed off the angry kids got with what happened at this or that caucus.  They'll never grow up.  They haven't learned from the history of those Republican presidencies, they'll never learn.  I once thought Bernie Sanders would wise them up to things.  He won't, either.

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