Remember this: When liberals do the right thing morally, they often injure themselves politically.
They did this weekend.
On Saturday, at their summer meeting, the Democratic National Committee voted to right a legitimate wrong. In doing so they will operate with greater moral rightness in their process. They may even attempt to right a past wrong. Simultaneously they will expose their biggest weakness—the truth about what America’s left-of-center party stands for.
Let’s take these assertions one at a time.
The new policy as adopted by the DNC on Saturday holds that on the first ballot of their nomination at the next convention the candidates will only be able to count the actual delegates pledged to them through the wins and losses of the primary cycle. The infamous—and establishment friendly—Superdelegates will only be counted should the nominating convention proceed to a second ballot.
Superdelegates more or less allowed Hillary Clinton in 2016 to take wins for states she didn’t earn on the ground and as the process went along built a narrative that overwhelmed the grassroots candidacy of Bernie Sanders. Minus the Superdelegates Sanders would have been the nominee, and possibly in remarkable time. He had attracted his party’s hard left base and they were showing up for him in big numbers late into the nomination process. As long as Clinton was able to perpetuate the aura of inevitability she continued to get the better media coverage, opportunities, and fund-raising.
In short, a crooked and rigged system, allowed the non-most-favored candidate to end up with the nomination in large measure—not because of momentum on the ground—but high ranking party officials setting the “fix.”
So what does this mean practically?
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In all probability the rule change preventing “the fix” will mean that the angry Bernie Sanders’ voters of 2016 will now have a clear path to get their man nominated. This rule change, in my opinion helps he alone uniquely in ways that none of the other Democrats would ever benefit from.
In 2016 Sanders could be postured as the extreme portion of the party when Clinton went to campaign in more moderate states like North Carolina, West Virginia, and those oh-so-valued rust belt states. In 2020 it will be an all out ground game.
Additionally it appears as though California has insisted upon becoming a part of the Democratic nomination process much earlier in the year than they have in the past. The far left progressives that have utterly destroyed that state control all of the major Democratic power centers now. Presidential candidates will need to race to the front of the progressive/socialist rhetoric to win the big prize of bountiful California—especially now that there will be no Superdelegates hedging bets for establishment (read that Pelosi/Schumer style) Democrats.
So why should conservatives care?
Going back to the premise at the top of this column, Sanders’ style “Democrats” will be gaining access to more oxygen on national television, gaining the preferred placement in print and online left leaning news organizations, and enjoy a much bigger advantage in first-in-line access to the few major donors that all of the candidates always seek to gain the good graces of.
They will be out on the trail talking up expensive and inefficient entitlement expansion—instead of putting forward actual solutions. They will be pushing family, sex, and gender altering ideas that church going families in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio just don’t get that worked up about.
Most importantly they will be pushing an open borders agenda (have to in order to win California) while union families in the same said rust belt have seen jobs lost in a myriad of ways, and are simply looking for rational common sense response to an out of control immigration chaos.
So in doing the morally right thing in making the nomination for the Democratic nominee more fair, transparent, and equitable, they will have simultaneously dropped the curtain on what they actually believe and just how damaging it is, not just to Republicans, Independents, and Conservatives. Most importantly they will be exposing their real anti-American bias to fellow Democrats who may want Government to offer occasional safety nets, but don’t want their daughters getting tax-funded abortions without their knowledge.
There is an unmitigated anger within the liberal ranks of America at what happened to Bernie Sanders in 2016. Congressman Joe Crowley of New York felt it when he was bounced from Congress by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That anger looks on with distain towards Donald Trump no doubt. But they equally perceive “power players” in their own party as a part of the cabal. Schumer, Pelosi, and even former Vice President Joe Biden all represent that cabal.
Bernie Sanders got cheated. The party is trying to make it right. They are doing the right thing.
But when liberals tell us the truth about what they believe, the overwhelming majority of America want nothing to do with it.
It’s the Liberal dilemma, and it may be one of the most important ingredients in the 2020 recipe.
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