Hearing it from DNC Chair, Tom Perez, was one thing, but I feel extra-vindicated, somehow, hearing America’s most celebrated intellectual and leftist, Prof. Noam Chomsky, call “shenanigans” on the vote-suppressing farce that was the 2016 Democratic Primary.
RE: DEFEATING DONALD TRUMP AND THE GOP
If we don’t reform this broken and corrupted system, the Democrats will continue selecting right-wing corporate hacks for “nominees” and LOSING ELECTIONS to appalling Republican candidates like Donald Trump (and worse than Trump, eventually). And they will continue sabotaging the candidacies of actual liberals who promise to bring the party back from the dead and win elections.
So, if we’re not #DemEXIT-ing and going Green/Democratic Socialist/ independent/whatever, then we sure as hell need to demand — like true, firebrand progressives — that the Democratic Party does away with closed primaries and super-delegates. And mandates a re-vote for any county or state that closes more than half of its polling stations on election day or refuses to release raw vote totals — or refuses to conduct audits when exit polls are suspiciously far off the officially reported vote counts. We need to insist that the DNC schedules more than a handful of strictly controlled debates (with real journalists moderating, next time). And it must prohibit money-laundering schemes that starve down-ballot Democrats of funds while lavishing funds on the candidate at the top of the ticket. And the DNC must address blatant voter-disenfranchising, rat-f’g bias coming from unscrupulous party officials (in a way that prevents such conduct in the future, costing the beneficiary delegates, for instance; the DNC needs to do better than fire corrupt officials after the damage is done, once the primary has been safely rigged).
We also need to demand that the party embrace a strong progressive agenda, including Medicare-for-All, free college, and a $15 min. wage — an agenda supported by strong majorities of the American public.
Either the Democratic Party does these things and begins restoring the credibility of the nominal left, or they should simply admit that they have no more interest in defeating Trump than they do in conducting fair and transparent elections — and they’re just playing us for fools.