After Bernie's Win in Iowa, the Democratic Party Is Shitting Its Pants
By Connor Kilpatrick, Jacobin
07 February 20
Democratic Party leaders like Tom Perez have long dismissed the threat posed
by Bernie Sanders. With their meltdown in Iowa after Bernie's victory, we're
witnessing the final crumbling of that delusion - and they have no one to
blame but themselves.
The mask is off now.
Earlier today, Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez, announced via
Twitter that he was calling for a complete "recanvassing" of Monday's Iowa
Democratic Caucus - a contest Sanders handily won by popular vote and was
likely to win by even the party's own deeply confusing and arbitrary
official metric known as "state delegate equivalents."
For those who want to give Perez the benefit of the doubt, CNN reported that
the DNC Chair made the call specifically due to the method in which
delegates were being awarded to the satellite caucus sites - places where
Sanders crushed his competition, particularly in those that were
disproportionately working class and nonwhite. At the Ottumwa site, Ethopian
immigrant workers at an Iowa pork facility handed overwhelming victory to
Sanders, with only a single Warren supporter - a staffer for her campaign -
preventing a complete Sanders blowout.
These were the satellites that were to hand Sanders a third metric of
victory in Iowa - this one by the arcane and confusing "State Delegate
Equivalents" metric which few, even in the Iowa Democratic Party, seem to
understand. Wednesday night, just before that group of satellites was to be
counted, the Iowa Democratic Party abruptly announced they were breaking for
the night. Just a few hours later, Perez attempted to invalidate the
election.
You might remember Perez from the 2016 Wikileaks hack of the DNC, in which
he made it clear that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were one in the same:
"I also look forward to my appearance on Telemundo tomorrow where I can
trumpet [Hillary Clinton's] strong support among Latinos and put a fork once
and for all in the false narrative about Bernie and Latinos."
I feel almost a little sorry for Perez - he's been tasked with saving a
party elite and a status quo that cannot and should not be saved. But
Democratic Party leaders like him have dismissed the Sanders threat for
years now at their peril. What you're witnessing this week is the final
crumbling of that delusion. And they have no one to blame but themselves.
Had they taken Sanders and his coalition seriously, they probably could have
stopped him by now. But they didn't - they simply couldn't believe an old
socialist with a funny regional accent could rally millions to such
off-the-wall causes as Medicare-for-All and full employment, two former
planks of the supposed workers party which they curiously never got around
to implementing.
And for once, we might have to thank the US Constitution for this turn of
events. If we lived under a Westminster system, Trump's election might very
well have seen Sanders taking over as the official leader of a deeply
divided opposition party way back in 2017, giving our ruling class years to
take him down as they finally did with Jeremy Corbyn in the UK.
Thankfully, the sheer arrogance of our elites kept them from ever
considering the possibility that Sanders, despite being loathed by DC
politicos, was already in effect the leader of the Democratic Party as
determined by its voters who, unlike the party elite, always liked the guy.
And now it's only a few months until the Democratic National Convention in
Milwaukee, after which - if Sanders does indeed win the nomination - it will
be only a few months more until the general election.
Our ruling class can do a lot of damage in that time, but not as much as
they could've done in the past three years. They couldn't even find an
anti-Sanders champion to rally around. In fact, they're still looking for
one, falling in love with a new politico only to dump them for the next hot
young thing. We've watched as the media puffed up Beto O'Rourke, then Kamala
Harris, then Pete Buttigieg, then Elizabeth Warren, now cycling back to
Buttigieg and perhaps Michael Bloomberg. Like desperate, miserable Tinder
users, they want somebody worth a swipe-right, but their heart is forcing
them to swipe left.
Whatever happens between now and Milwaukee, they failed to put out the flame
that has spread like wildfire across the country. But that doesn't mean that
shit isn't about to get totally insane. It definitely is. And it's far too
late to turn back now. Simply by demanding basic working-class policies like
Medicare for All, full employment, and a reform of our anti-democratic
political institutions, we have collectively picked a fight. And it's going
to be the fight of our lives, starting right now.
Perez and the "Stop Bernie!" clown car that is the Democratic Party are only
the first line of defense for the American ruling class. We've got a long
road ahead of us and we're not even close to the final boss. So just take a
deep breath. It's going to get a lot uglier soon.
