The warning bell tolls for thee DNC
by digby
People love to portray Bernie Sanders as some kind of loony left liberal without any sense of how the world really works. That is a mistake. Here is what he said this morning on Meet the Press this morning:
“We have had our differences of opinions with the DNC. But at the end of the day, the DNC, Hillary Clinton and myself — we want to defeat right-wing extremism in this country. So we're trying to work out our differences of opinion.”
That's your unpragmatic socialist purist for you.
Primaries are tough fights and they serve the important purpose of allowing all factions of the party to have a say in the way the party is run and the agenda it promotes. It's really the only time everyone has a chance to weigh in and influence the system through the system. But the campaigns want to win and they will push as hard as they can to make that happen. That's natural and the way it should be. But it's also good for the candidates themselves to stay somewhat above that fray so that when all is said and done, however it comes out in the end, the party can still provide a basic organizing function.
The DNC under Wasserman-Schultz has been incredibly dismissive of the left wing of the party in ways that actually go far beyond what people are upset about in the presidential race. The two congressional campaign committees are just as bad. They do everything in their power to suppress the progressive left. And they've put all the elements in place for a very ugly backlash. If they want to see the Democrats come apart like the Republicans are doing they'll keep it up.
Sanders and Clinton will do what they have to do to bring the party together regardless of which one of them wins. The stakes are always high but at this point of peak right wingnuttia, they are even higher than usual. Nonetheless, the Democratic establishment is very shortsighted if they don't look at this race, see the growing strength of the progressive wing in the party, and start to find ways to accommodate it rather than dismissing it as a bunch of fringe characters. It's not. It's the largest single faction in the party --- and it's getting restless. A little respect would be a good starting place.
Update: When I say the DNC has been dismissive of the left I'm talking about the down ticket races in which they do involve themselves by guiding donors to more conservative candidates and cutting off the access to money by progressives. A lot of wealthy liberals depend on the DNC to help them decide who to support and they are very often ... misled. Progressives have to fight twice as hard in districts and states where they have good chances to win because they're fighting their own party right along with the Republicans.
This was handled better during the Howard Dean years. It doesn't have to be this way.
Happy Hollandaise everyone.
Happy Hollandaise everyone.
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