Tag: Democrat

national politics & policies political challengers

The Superdelegate Zombie Apocalypse

Post author By Redactor
Post date February 26, 2020
2 Comments on The Superdelegate Zombie Apocalypse

Back in 2016, this commentary was perhaps the first howl in the political wilderness against the unfairness of the Democratic Party’s use of “superdelegates” — office holders and party officials who by party rules automatically serve as unelected but voting delegates at the national convention . . . which chooses the presidential nominee.

Four years ago, the superdelegates, who account for roughly 15 percent of the total delegate vote, favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders by an incredible 97 to 3 percent.

Fast forward to 2020 and Dems have made what DNC Chair Tom Perez called “historic” changes to this ‘super-delegation’ — now referred to as “automatic” delegates. These non-elected insiders may not vote on the first ballot.

That’s a big deal.

But with so many candidates still in the contest, and those contests front-loaded — next week’s Super Tuesday features primaries in 14 states, including populous California and Texas — it appears unlikely that any candidate will garner a majority of delegates on the first ballot.

And next come the superdelegates.

And, again, they are likely to hurt the Vermont senator.

“Sanders . . . could win the most pledged delegates — those allocated on the basis of votes during the marathon Democratic primaries,” explains The Guardian, “but be swindled, at the last, by the Democratic party elite.”

That is not all. “DNC members discuss rules change to stop Sanders at convention,” reads a recent Politico headline.

Reporting from the “sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting,” Politico discloses discussions regarding “the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention.”

Democratic process does not appear to be the Democrats’ strong suit.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Democrat, primary elections, superdelegate, zombie

ideological culture political challengers

Discriminating Democrats

Democrat, Democratic, candidates, presidential, president, debate, race, quota,

In ten days, the Democratic Party will hold a presidential debate that, according to the rules established by the Democratic National Committee, includes six qualified candidates all of whom are white.

Which is apparently not the right color.

“Of course, there is nothing wrong with Democrats selecting a white presidential candidate to represent the party,” writes David de la Fuente at The Daily Beast. “But that should be up to the voters, and not the DNC by means of their debate inclusion practices.”

Those “practices” or rules seem straightforward enough — at least, they did . . . until the results were not to the liking of some. To earn a place on the Dec. 19 debate stage, a candidate must have garnered donations from 200,000 individuals, while also reaching 4 percent or higher in four recognized polls, or 6 percent in two polls.

The six qualified pale-faced candidates are: former Vice-President Joe Biden, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), billionaire activist Tom Steyer, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

A seventh candidate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, a woman of color, had also qualified for the debate stage — before she dropped out of the race.

Not yet able to jump all the hurdles? African-American Sen. Corey Booker (D-N.J.); Asian-American entrepreneur Andrew Yang; and Samoan-American Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii). They have all reached the donation requirement, but not yet met the polling threshold.

I wish them luck, especially my favorite, Gabbard.

Still, the choice is rightly up to Democratic voters. If enough speak up for Booker, Yang or Gabbard in polls, “diversity” will obtain its place.

If not, should Democrats use a racial quota system?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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judiciary partisanship U.S. Constitution

Heal or Heel?

Supreme Court, packing, packed, red, blue, Republican,Democrat, right, left, partisan,

Call it High Court chutzpah?

In a Second Amendment case seeking U.S. Supreme Court review, five U.S. Senators have filed an amicus curie or “friend of the court” brief . . . that wasn’t very friendly.

“The Supreme Court is not well,” argue Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in their brief against the Court accepting the case. “Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’”

A not-very-veiled threat.

Is their goal really to ‘reduce political influence’? Or to leverage influence against the Court should it not “heal itself” — or come to heel — by authoring judicial decisions more to Democrats’ liking?

Seven Democratic presidential contenders, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Kristen Gillibrand, support court packing — having the next Democrat-controlled Congress increase the size of the SCOTUS beyond nine justices, to 12 or 15.

“[M]ost Americans recognize this tactic for what it is, which is a direct attack on the independence of the Supreme Court,” Sarah Turberville and Anthony Marcum write in The Hill. “It is no coincidence that court packing is employed by would be autocrats all over the world rather than by leaders of liberal democracies.”

To supposedly “depoliticize” the “partisan” Supreme Court, Mayor Pete Buttigieg wants to pick five justices to represent Democrats and five to represent Republicans, and then those ten would together choose five additional justices.

Nothing like being overtly partisan to vanquish partisanship, eh?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags blind justice, court packing, Democrat, judicial, justice, law, left, partisan, partisanship, Republican, right, Supreme Court

incumbents partisanship

AOC Right, DCCC Wrong

“AOC is right as rain here,” I re-tweeted Sunday.

And what was the usually all-wet U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) right about?

“By stymieing primaries,” the freshman representative had tweeted at her own party’s congressional leaders and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), “you deny most voters their best chance at choosing their representative.”

On purpose.

Ocasio-Cortez refers to the recent DCCC announcement, first reported by The Intercept, that “warned political strategists and vendors . . . that if they support candidates mounting primary challenges against incumbent House Democrats, the party will cut them off from business.”

Isn’t the goal of the DCCC to elect as many Democrats to Congress as possible?

No.

“The core mission of the DCCC is electing House Democrats, which includes supporting and protecting incumbents,” reads a new form for party political consultants. “To that end, the DCCC will not conduct business with, nor recommend to any of its targeted campaigns, any consultant that works with an opponent of a sitting Member of the House Democratic Caucus.”

In short, if you want to make money, and most political professionals do, don’t dare work for a Democratic challenger against a Democratic incumbent.

“If the DCCC enacts this policy to blacklist vendors who work with challengers, we risk undermining an entire universe of potential candidates and vendors — especially women and people of color,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, another Democratic freshman who defeated an incumbent Democrat, tweeted on Saturday.

The policy has been enacted and is in full effect.

Among Washington Democrats, incumbency trumps everything . . . even diversity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. The National Republican Congressional Committee has long had this same total fixation — mutatis mutandis — on re-electing incumbents. In fact, the newsworthiness of this latest DCCC strong-arming of consultants seems to be only that the insider power-play is more “open” than ever before.

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, campaign, democracy, Democrat, fairness, funding, incumbent

ideological culture too much government

Worse Than Her Faux Pas

“If we work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress,” stumbled U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.-N.Y.), “uh, rather, all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate, and the House. . . .”

The Daily Wire, where I encountered this particular snippet of inanity, could be caught gloating between her lines. And it is funny (amidst the fear) when politicians prove themselves ignorant, clueless, unprepared. Politicians rarely come across as masters of their subject.

But we who are subjected to their lack of mastery should worry about their substantive flubs more than their trivial technical errors.

As the newly elected solon herself had the wit to notice.

“Maybe instead of Republicans drooling over every minute of footage of me in slow-mo, waiting to chop up word slips that I correct in real-tomd [sic],” she went on, “they actually step up enough to make the argument they want to make: that they don’t believe people deserve a right to healthcare.”

I am not a Republican, but I’m here to help. The only rights we “deserve” are those we can have without enslaving and exploiting others. My right to freedom requires only your duty to leave me alone, not systematically taking from others or running their lives. But a right to “healthcare”? The corresponding duties are vague and ominous, potentially limitless.

And thus oppressive.

A government big enough to give Ocasio-Cortez everything she wants is too big to leave any freedom for the rest of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture term limits

Hating the Senate

The longest-serving politician in Congress — ever — thinks he has the perfect reform to put American government back on track.

Former House Democrat John Dingell wants to abolish the Senate.

According to him, the United States should go unicameral.

The ancient bicameral tradition — which goes back to Sumer — is so old hat. He thinks that, these days, “in a nation of more than 325 million and 37 additional states, not only is that structure antiquated, it’s downright dangerous.”

Dangerous? Well, he has always hated the Senate. He sees it as a place where “good bills go to die.”

His new book explains this at length, but I confess: it would go against my principles to put any money into that man’s pocket by buying The Dean: The Best Seat in the House (2018). He almost personifies everything I’m against. His very career is an atrocity. In 1955, John Jr. took over the House seat from his father, a 22-year incumbent, and then six decades later, in 2015, basically bestowed it on his wife.

That’s 86 years and counting.

How many times did he swear to uphold the Constitution? And yet he doesn’t seem to understand that Article V, governing the amendment process, establishes one specific limitation: “no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.”

Jettisoning the U.S. Senate would seem to be such a deprivation.

The opposite of this Dingelldorf reform would be more in keeping with the spirit of our system: term limits.

To keep anything like a John Dingell Sixty-year Stretch from ever occurring again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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