{"id":178764,"date":"2018-08-26T18:07:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-26T23:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/08\/26\/the-devil-is-in-the-details\/"},"modified":"2018-08-26T18:07:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-26T23:07:00","slug":"the-devil-is-in-the-details","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/08\/26\/the-devil-is-in-the-details\/","title":{"rendered":"The Devil is in the Details"},"content":{"rendered":"
The DNC has voted to remove the “Superdelegates” vote from the first round balloting at the next party nominating convention<\/a>.<\/div>\n

I’m cynical enough about the Democratic Party establishment to wonder what sort of trap is in the small print.<\/p>\n

The Democratic National Committee voted Saturday to neutralize the votes of unpledged convention delegates, part of a package of hard-fought reforms designed to prevent a repeat of the bitter 2016 presidential primary as the party looks toward the 2020 election. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe listened and we acted, and I\u2019m proud that our party is doing everything we can to bring people in and make it easier to vote,\u201d said DNC Chairman Tom Perez after the reforms were unanimously approved.<\/p>\n

The new party rules undo decades-old reforms that empowered hundreds of party activists and elected officials, often referred to as \u201csuperdelegates,\u201d whose presidential convention votes were not bound to the results of primaries or caucuses. They also affirm the decision of six states to move from caucuses, which have favored insurgent candidates, to primaries, which tend to have higher turnout.<\/p>\n

The Democrats\u2019 journey to that decision lasted more than two years, and divided party leaders even as activists who had supported both Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) organized behind them. Anger at the results of that primary campaign, and at Clinton\u2019s defeat, has dogged the DNC under Perez\u2019s leadership; despite a run of election wins, it has raised $116.5 million since the start of the cycle, compared with $227.2 million for the RNC.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a way for us to heal the wounds of the 2016 election,\u201d Martin said in an interview before the vote. \u201cMinnesota was a 62 percent Bernie state. People cared about this. We were dealing with a perception problem more than a reality problem, but that perception problem mattered. People believed so passionately that this issue cost their candidate the nomination, that we had to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Perez and other delegate reform supporters succeeded in weakening the establishment opposition by giving it more time to protest. But the opposition made one final push, picking up on a theme that the Congressional Black Caucus had aired last month \u2014 that to take away the votes of black superdelegates was to effectively suppress them. The unofficial leaders of that faction, former party chair Don Fowler and California DNC member Bob Mulholland, are white. But Mulholland, a gruff Vietnam veteran, invoked the legacy of the civil rights movement to argue that his party risked alienating its most loyal voters to appease a faction of elite Sanders fans.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Perez and other delegate reform supporters succeeded in weakening the establishment opposition by giving it more time to protest. But the opposition made one final push, picking up on a theme that the Congressional Black Caucus had aired last month \u2014 that to take away the votes of black superdelegates was to effectively suppress them. The unofficial leaders of that faction, former party chair Don Fowler and California DNC member Bob Mulholland, are white. But Mulholland, a gruff Vietnam veteran, invoked the legacy of the civil rights movement to argue that his party risked alienating its most loyal voters to appease a faction of elite Sanders fans.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

But that message did not unify the DNC\u2019s black members, some of whom pointed out that the 2016 pool of superdelegates skewed whiter than the delegates elected through primaries. While former party chair Donna Brazile gave a 10-minute speech decrying the reform, Nina Turner, president of the Sanders-founded group Our Revolution, whipped votes in favor of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cReal voter disenfranchisement is living in a state where you forfeit your rights if you\u2019re a felon,\u201d Turner said. \u201cReal disenfranchisement is officials closing down polling places that disproportionately affect black voters. This is a false equivalency, to talk about something that happens in the DNC and compare it to the hard, bloody fight to secure the franchise in the real world.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The entire colloquy with representatives of CBC is depressing:  Even though the elimination of superdelegates makes the votes less white, “Superdelegates skewed whiter than the delegates elected through primaries,” they are unwilling to look beyond their own personal prerogatives.<\/p>\n

It’s on par with James Clyburn’s attacks on Bernie Sanders’ proposal to eliminate tuition at public schools because it would be bad for the HBCUs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is way too much pulling up the ladder after themselves here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The DNC has voted to remove the “Superdelegates” vote from the first round balloting at the next party nominating convention. I’m cynical enough about the Democratic Party establishment to wonder what sort of trap is in the small print. The Democratic National Committee voted Saturday to neutralize the votes of unpledged convention delegates, part of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[469,368,374,536],"class_list":["post-178764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bureaucracy","tag-corruption","tag-politics","tag-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}