Let’s remember what the Russian hacks of the DNC accomplished for Donald Trump and the Republican Party back in the summer of 2016. Here is how the New York Times reported on the immediate fallout once the pilfered emails were released to the world by Julian Assange:
Democrats arrived at their nominating convention on Sunday under a cloud of discord as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, abruptly said she was resigning after a trove of leaked emails showed party officials conspiring to sabotage the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
The revelation, along with sizable pro-Sanders protests here in the streets to greet arriving delegates, threatened to undermine the delicate healing process that followed the contentious fight between Mr. Sanders and Hillary Clinton. And it raised the prospect that a convention that was intended to showcase the Democratic Party’s optimism and unity, in contrast to the Republicans, could be marred by dissension and disorder.
Bernie Sanders was satisfied, but reminded folks that “The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race.” Some of his supporters were gleeful:
Mr. Sanders’s supporters were elated by Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s decision, which they said had been long overdue.
“Thank God for WikiLeaks,” said Dan O’Neal, a delegate from Arizona who was wearing a “Bernie for President” T-shirt. “The party was stacked from the beginning with Debbie in charge.”
I’ve always believed that the story of impartiality was a bit overblown. It seemed less a matter of trying to game the system against Bernie than not taking his chances seriously and operating under the assumption that Clinton was already the nominee. Regardless, it was understood at the time that Schultz needed to resign because the process she had presided over had been flawed at best and unfair to Sanders at worst.
Now, I know that there’s a difference between a primary contest involving candidates who are vying to replace an incumbent president and a primary contest that involves an incumbent president. In theory, however, the same principles should apply. If a president receives a challenger or challengers from within his or her own party, those challengers should be allowed to operate on a level playing field.
The Republicans most definitely don’t see things that way.
When Trump ran in 2016, he was a political outsider regarded with thinly veiled contempt by much of the Republican establishment. Now that very same establishment — the leaders of the GOP in Washington and states across the country — has fallen in lockstep behind the president and begun marshaling efforts to ensure him a second term.
In January, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution of “undivided support” for the president after reaching an unprecedented agreement to merge the party and Trump’s reelection team into a single unit. Weeks later, the party’s chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, taunted any would-be contestant. “Have at it,” she said at the Conservative Political Action Conference put on by Schlapp’s organization. “Waste your money, waste your time and go ahead and lose.”
Imagine if then-DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had told Bernie Sanders to go ahead and challenge Hillary Clinton but he’d be wasting his time and money, and that he would surely lose. That would have been evidence of bias and a rigged system far beyond what actually occurred on the Democratic side in 2015 and 2016. Think about how silly it would sound if a Republican challenger to Donald Trump pleaded that “The party leadership must…always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process.”
Things don’t look much more inviting on the ground in Iowa.
Steve Scheffler, who represents Iowa on the Republican National Committee, has a warning for anyone in the party hoping to deny President Trump the 2020 GOP nomination.
“We want to protect the integrity of the caucuses and give people the ability to make their case,” he said, referring to the balloting that kicks off the election season next February. But, Scheffler went on, there will be zero tolerance for any Republican who comes to Iowa and “starts bashing the president and his policies.”
“That,” he said, “will be dealt with.”
This is just one more example that demonstrates that there are significant differences between the two major American political parties. Both of them are biased against outsiders and insurgent candidates and both of them will create significant hurdles for anyone trying to challenge the status quo. But only the Democrats recognize that the correct standard of behavior from their party apparatus is impartiality in their internal elections. The Republicans don’t even pretend that their primaries and caucuses will be administered fairly, and they certainly won’t be forcing Ronna Romney McDaniel to resign if evidence emerges that she put her fingers on the scale for Trump.
This doesn’t bother me. Let them run their show however they want.
Imbalances in coverage and reporting are important; they’re hypocritical and dangerous and have to be called out. But the Republicans being less inclusive or fair or logical or truthful, intrinsically, is their brand and they’re entitled to it (Again, as long as it’s all covered honestly).
Yes, exactly. Their voters simply don’t care if there is no fairness or inclusion because they’re all authoritarians.
Does anyone really think Kasich or Larry Hogan would have a shot against Trump even in a fair GOP primary scenario? Which makes their ham-handedness all the more stupid.
And then the Clinton campaign gave her a position which was all kinds of an own goal.
Anyhow you are cotrect I’d rather Bernie compete in a system like the dems because it is much more fair. But looking at how Trump won the nomination in the face of significant party bias against him is also very important.
The Clinton campaign could not have been more short sighted or stupid. I’m sorry to say that. I supported her candidacy over Bernie. But at ground-level they played their cards very badly. By contrast the Obama people knew what they were doing.
Here in very blue Washington, Obama’s people gave enough energy to make sure there was real engagement and energy on the ground even though the state was well in the bag for him. Clinton’s campaign acted like we didn’t exist which depressed energy down ballot and would have had a very real impact on any Clinton administration. Of course her people took it so far they considered states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan in the bag. Hindsight makes abundantly clear the extent to which they had their heads firmly inserted up their asses.
To be fair everyone was yelling about a blue wall. But Clinton made a lot of basic mistakes in the campaign.
Wisconsin especially I dont understand. Scott Walker had crushed democrats for nearly a decade so they should have seen the weakness in the brand in at least that state.
From Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains:
“The Koch team’s most important stealth move, and the one that proved most critical to success, was to wrest control over the machinery of the Republican Party, beginning in the late 1990’s and with sharply escalating determination after 2008. From there it was just a short step to lay claim to being the true representatives of the party, declaring all others RINOS. But while these radicals of the Right operate within the Republican Party and use that party as a delivery vehicle, make no mistake about it: the cadre’s loyalty is not the GOP or its traditions or standard bearers. Their loyalty is to their revolutionary cause….
…”The new men in the wings respect only compliance; if they fail to get it, they respond with vengeance”
That might be true if any of the old Republican guard remained within the party. At this point the Tea Party is the Republican Party. Trump is the party. Maybe that works for them short term but I feel all but certain it will result in their eventual demise.
What makes it a tough slog is that desperate people tend to become more conservative and more easily hoodwinked. The Republicans create the very conditions that they then manipulate to their own evil ends.
Long term though I don’t see it working. I hope not anyway. And even if I’m correct, even if Texas trends blue and blows up the party, how much damage will have been done? These are challenging times.
And even if I’m correct, even if Texas trends blue and blows up the party, how much damage will have been done? These are challenging times.
Look at Wisconsin. And all the damage that has been done there. And still Democrats continually drop the ball. Did you know there was an election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court today? And turnout was even higher than last year, supposedly. Which is fucking nuts. Somehow the GOP finds/drives their voters to the polls. Meaning they feed red meat to their base.
And the Nazi Party was not fair to anybody challenging Adolph Hitler either. Not a surprise.
The modern GOP is the party of authoritarian lovers. They are about violence and beating your opponents. Caring about fairness is like complaining when your opponent “cheats” at Professional Wrestling. Nobody is supposed to follow the ostensible “rules”, so, grabbing a chair out of the audience and hitting your opponent with it is not only “fair” it’s expected.
They are looking for the strongest appearing strong-man. The one who can crush his enemies with the greatest ruthlessness, and make fun of their weaknesses, mocking the disabled, immigrants, and anybody who appears vulnerable and weak. No mercy, no compassion, no humanity.
That touchy feely stuff is for liberal weaklings! Not us Manly warrior-men doing manly stuff, like voting for Trump! Build that wall out of the bones of immigrant women and children! Have a row of immigrant skulls on top of the wall! That will deter them from coming into “Our country!”
The Repub party was somewhat tepid to National Trumpalism when it arrived on the scene, but now that the party has tried it on for size, it likes the fit just fine, with the perverted and anti-democratic white “conservative” base especially loving it. So there’s no dissenting Repub voice, and none is wanted.
For the nation as a whole, including our useless media, it should be instructive to watch one of America’s major political parties morph into an American Nazi party, with every rabid white nationalist (i.e. “conservative”) brownshirt screaming “Sieg Heil!” in adoration of Der Trumper, our poor man’s Fuhrer. One would also think that a choice between an intolerant know-nothing authoritarian party and a pluralist democratic one would be an easy choice for our vaunted “independents” and “libertarians”, but they are a pretty weak reed for a democracy to rely upon. Rational thought is no longer a feature of American society.
Ultimately the nation cannot evade the fate that has brought us here, nor our look into the final abyss for American “democracy”. The permanently debased “conservative” party must run its debased demagogue. Muss es sein? Es muss sein…
They know the historical data regarding how a credible primary challenge can undermine the standard bearer. They have no faith that their voters can’t be pulled in another direction. I don’t see the weakness in terms of a moderate bringing them back from the edge but rather a new conman out-conning the old one. It’s clear they’re not going to allow it. I don’t see it hurting them because their supporters don’t care about niceties of governance. As others have said, they respect and crave raw power. The more raw and brutal the better.
Let’s hope there are enough voters nationwide turned off by their approach and who will stay activated in the face of ever-more sophisticated Russian efforts to turn the rest of us against each other and against ourselves.
“Schultz needed to resign because the process she had presided over had been flawed at best and unfair to Sanders at worst.”
Sanders and his aides knew the rules in advance. Their select arguing of which should be applied to benefit Bernie Sanders and which should be ignored to benefit HRC shows that they knew how to use those rules.
I think we should have national primaries. But we don’t, and we live in a country where the primaries/caucus are decided by state rules that competent people know about ahead of time. If we went with a national vote primary in 2008, we may never even of had President Obama, instead it would have been HRC.
That’s because the Democratic nominating process was corrupt; the GOP process is beyond corrupt.
“It seemed less a matter of trying to game the system against Bernie than not taking his chances seriously and operating under the assumption that Clinton was already the nominee.”
Yes, but the only reason it was assumed that Clinton was already the nominee, is that they system WAS gamed, in front.
It was “gamed” in the sense that all the donors and large portions of the party apparatus crowded towards her, and other opponents who might challenge her declined because they recognized it as futile. But that’s what politics is, at its core? Winning support, giving goodies to your supporters, and depressing suppprt among your enemies.
Yes, but it was too unbalanced.
He’s the incumbent. I doubt either party would allow/support/encourage a primary challenge to their incumbent President unless s/he was grossly incompetent. Oh wait, let me rephrase: unless they weren’t giving the party and its donors what they wanted.
Do you think anyone would have raised a peep in Bernie’s name if Obama was on the ticket for a 3rd term?