Remember: When liberals do the right thing morally, they often hurt themselves politically.
They did it this weekend.
On Saturday, at its summer meeting, the Democratic National Committee voted to correct a legitimate mistake. In doing so, they will act with greater moral righteousness in their process. They may even attempt to correct a past mistake. In the process, they will expose their greatest weakness — the truth about what the American leftist party stands for.
Let’s look at these statements in turn.
The novel policy adopted by the DNC on Saturday stipulates that candidates will be able to count only delegates that were actually pledged to them through wins and losses in the primary cycle on the first nominating ballot at the next convention. The infamous — and establishment-friendly — superdelegates will only be counted if the nominating convention goes to a second round of voting.
Superdelegates more or less allowed Hillary Clinton to win states in 2016 that she didn’t win locally, and in the process built a narrative that overwhelmed Bernie Sanders’ grassroots candidacy. Without superdelegates, Sanders would have been the nominee, and probably at an extraordinary time. He attracted his party’s far-left base, which turned out for him in enormous numbers slow in the nominating process. As long as Clinton was able to perpetuate an aura of inevitability, she continued to receive better media coverage, opportunities, and fundraising.
In compact, the unfair and rigged system largely allowed a candidate who was not the favorite to win the nomination — not because of the dynamics of the situation on the ground, but because high-ranking party officials “got it done.”
What does this mean in practice?
Most likely, the rule change preventing a “fix” will mean that irate Bernie Sanders voters from 2016 will now have a clear path to their man’s nomination. This rule change, in my opinion, helps him in a unique way that no other Democrat would ever benefit from.
In 2016, Sanders could be portrayed as a fringe party member, with Clinton campaigning in more moderate states like North Carolina, West Virginia and those oh-so-cherished rust belt states. In 2020, it will be all-out terrain.
In addition, it appears that California has insisted on participating in the Democratic nominating process much earlier this year than in the past. The far-left progressives who utterly destroyed the state now control all of the major Democratic power centers. Presidential candidates will have to race to the forefront of progressive/socialist rhetoric to win the gigantic prize of a generous California — especially now that there will be no Superdelegates hedging bets for establishment Democrats (read: Pelosi/Schumer style).
So why should conservatives care?
To return to the premise at the beginning of this column, Sanders-style “Democrats” will gain access to more air on national television, will gain preferred space in left-wing print and online news organizations, and will enjoy a much greater advantage in first-mover access to the few major donors whose favor all candidates always seek to curry.
They will be on the trail talking about costly and ineffective expansion of entitlements—instead of proposing real solutions. They will promote ideas about family, sex, and gender transitioning that church-going families in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio simply do not care about.
Most importantly, they will promote an open borders agenda (which is necessary to win in California) while union families in the same rust belt are losing jobs in a thousand ways and simply looking for a rational, common sense response to unchecked immigration chaos.
So doing it morally Normal The point is to make the Democratic nomination more forthright, limpid, and fair, while also revealing what they really believe in and how damaging it is, not just to Republicans, Independents, and Conservatives. Most importantly, they will reveal their true anti-American biases to fellow Democrats who may want the government to provide occasional safety nets but don’t want their daughters getting taxpayer-funded abortions without their knowledge.
There is unbridled anger among America’s liberals over what happened to Bernie Sanders in 2016. Rep. Joe Crowley of New York felt it when he was thrown out of Congress by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That anger undoubtedly looks with contempt at Donald Trump. But they also see the “power players” in their own party as part of the cabal. Schumer, Pelosi, and even former Vice President Joe Biden all represent that cabal.
Bernie Sanders was ripped off. The party is trying to fix it. They’re doing the right thing.
But when liberals tell us the truth about what they believe, the huge majority of Americans want nothing to do with it.
This is the Liberals’ dilemma, and perhaps one of the most significant ingredients in the 2020 recipe.
