Summary: The Democratic primary campaign has, to all intents and purposes, come to an end. Militant Sanders supporters notwithstanding, Hillary Rodham Clinton is the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States. Bernie can either yield gracefully and keep open the possibility of a Clinton-Sanders unity ticket, or he can pander to his supporters and forfeit that chance altogether, becoming a pariah in the Party of which he is a relatively recent member. We need to change the rules of the convention to abolish the racist and antidemocratic caucus mechanism, requiring every state to have a closed primary, and refusing to seat state delegations chosen by caucuses, and we also need to provide for a rule requiring that the Party’s nominee have been a registered Democrat for at least five years. We can’t run the risk of any more hostile takeovers by people who want to bern the party down.
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About two hours ago, I had my own “Dixville Notch” moment, as I walked into my polling place and discovered that I was the very first voter of the day.
If you are the very first voter, you are responsible for doing a number of things that other voters are not. You have to look at any touchscreens to make sure that they register zero, then you get to look inside the ballot box to make sure it hasn’t been pre-stuffed, after which you have to sign off on the whole thing.
This ritual is intended to make sure that there is no hanky-panky at the precinct, that overzealous supporters of any particular candidate can’t play fast and loose with vote totals.
I behaved myself, of course, and refrained from electioneering; though my allegiance to Hillary Rodham Clinton is an open secret, #imwithher; neither her name nor Bernard Sanders’ name were ever mentioned.
I must confess, the experience of being the very first voter, though new to me, reminded me of why I have made the effort to vote in every election since I turned 18. But this election is more consequential than any I have ever participated in.
As I write, in the early morning hours of June 7, 2016, voters in California will go to the polls. Democrats, or should I say sane Americans, will have a choice between Hillary Rodham Clinton or Bernard Sanders. For Sanders, this primary process is approaching endgame. It’s hard to tell who is angrier about that prospect, the Vermont Senator or his more unhinged supporters who see their hopes of a Sanders presidency going south.
The sheer ugliness of Sanders supporters I will leave to another time. What Bernard Sanders confronts right now, however, is one that in California politics is called a “drill,” i.e., having to make a political decision that is bound to piss off a powerful constituency no matter what decision you make. What makes a drill more problematic is that one does not have the traditional French option of deciding not to decide. How Bernard Sanders responds in the next 12 to 24 hours to the news that Hillary Clinton is now the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party is the drill.
He can yield gracefully, and in so doing keep open the possibility of a Clinton-Sanders unity ticket, albeit at the acknowledged risk of being called a “sellout” by his more militant supporters. Or, he can continue to be churlish and unyielding, defiant and kamikaze-like, and be a hero to his supporters and a pariah to the rest of the Democratic Party. In short, how Bernie behaves today and tonight will determine whether there is a place for him on the ticket or in a putative Clinton administration. The choice now is his. We can only hope that he makes the right one.
But what we do know is that Democratic Party’s concessions to the insurgent Vermont Senator are probably at an end. Cornel West, the concession appointment to the platform committee, will soon find himself outvoted and outspoken. Barney Frank, whom Sanders tried to have kicked out of his position as cochair of the Rules Committee, is not likely to be in a magnanimous mood now that Senator Sanders has lost. And indeed, now maybe it is time to make some significant rules changes in the way the party nominates its candidate.
These rule changes will not be congenial to Sanders nor will they be congenial to his supporters, And they should not be. The party should not respond well to a hostile takeover bid. First, the ridiculous, borderline racist, anti-democratic caucus process should be done away with entirely. Caucuses are, by well-nigh universal accord, a lousy way to choose delegates. They are intended to advantage the white, the well-off, and the well-connected. They take place largely in heavily white, nondiverse states, which raises the inference that a candidate who builds his strength in the caucus states is trafficking in a kind of racism unbecoming any Democrat. The caucuses it should be replaced immediately, as Minnesota has just done, by honest-to-God primary elections, in which every registered Democrat can vote, and where there is a legitimate secret ballot, so that voters need not fear any retribution for their choice. There have been numerous accounts of Hillary Clinton supporters facing retribution from angry Sanders supporters at caucuses. This must stop.
As much, however, as the caucus system should be replaced by primaries in which every registered Democrat may vote, they should be replaced by closed primaries, in which only registered Democrats may vote. Persons who choose to register no party preference have volitionally opted out of the Democratic process. They have opted to make a very public statement that they are not part of the Democratic Party. Why the hell should so-called independents be allowed a voice in choosing the nominee of the Democratic Party for dogcatcher, let alone President? If, for example, one registers as “no party preference,” one is engaged in a very public repudiation of the Democratic Party and its values. We don’t need such people intruding into our process and skewing our elections for our nominees. After all, what good is partisanship when you allow interlopers to screw up your process.
Hell, you might as well give up on the whole primary process and allow the GOP to select our candidates for us! This is what Bernie Sanders and his militant supporters don’t understand. The other major rules change that should happen is a requirement that someone seeking the Democratic nomination for president demonstrate a history in the Party. I find it an obscenity from a partisan perspective, that Bernie Sanders didn’t register is a Democrat until late last year, and now he wants to be our nominee for the presidency of United States. No, and a thousand times no! The convention should adopt a rule effective in the 2020 campaign requiring that no name may be placed in nomination who has not been a registered Democrat for at least five years, i.e., long enough to have participated in at least the previous election cycle.
Finally, to put some teeth into these rule changes, the convention should adopt a rule, effective in the 2020 election cycle, providing that states which have not discontinued the caucus process and adopted the closed primary will not have their delegations seated at the convention. And to prevent a nonconforming nomination from being made, at the convention, of a candidate who came “late to the party,” any delegate who proposes such a motion should, by operation of law, be deemed immediately to have forfeited his or her credentials as a delegate and be removed from the convention by any means necessary.
Does our process need reform? Yes, it does, but not in the direction Bernie Sanders and his supporters have advocated. If we do as Bernie Sanders and his supporters want, we won’t have a Party left by the time he and his friends have finished Berning it down.
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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed in this column are not intended, and should not be construed as, legal advice. He is most definitely with Hillary Clinton.
