truthdig | Let’s face it: Democracy is dangerous to the powerful who rely on big
money, institutional leverage and mass media to work their will. The
insurgencies of this decade against economic injustice—embodied in the
Occupy movement and then Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign—are
potentially dire threats to the established unjust order.
For those determined to retain their positions in the upper reaches
of the Democratic Party hierarchy, democracy within the party sounds
truly scary. And inauthenticity of the party—and its corresponding heavy
losses of seats from state legislatures to Capitol Hill during the last
10 years—don’t seem nearly as worrisome to Democratic elites as the
prospect that upsurges of grass-roots activities might remove them from
their privileged quarters.
As Sanders told a New York Times Magazine reporter
in early 2017: “Certainly there are some people in the Democratic Party
who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go down with the
Titanic so long as they have first-class seats.”
Twenty-five years ago, the so-called New Democrats were triumphant.
Today, their political heirs are eager to prevent the Democratic Party
from living up to its name. At stake is whether democracy will have a
chance to function.
A fundamental battle for democracy is in progress—a conflict over whether to reduce the number of superdelegates
to the party’s national convention in 2020, or maybe even eliminate
them entirely. That struggle is set to reach a threshold at a party
committee meeting next week and then be decided by the full Democratic
National Committee before the end of this summer.
To understand the Democratic Party’s current internal battle lines and what’s at stake, it’s important to know how we got here.
