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A few months ago I described President Trump as “unelectable.”
I have enough faith in the American people
to believe that a majority of voters find his open incitement
of violent racism appalling and his almost ritualistic
practice of cruelty to children sickening. In choosing the word
“unelectable,” though, I failed to take into account
the likelihood that the Democratic Party establishment
would blow it again.
Trump should never have been elected in the
first place, but the Democratic leadership in 2016
settled on a candidate who was even more unelectable.
Then, as the eminently impeachable president
continued on his merry way, abusing the powers
of his office with abandon, Democrats took the
drastic step of using the House of Representatives’
impeachment powers on weak and opaque grounds.
Representative Al Green (D-TX) had
proposed articles of impeachment that
were strong, persuasive, and clear, but
they were rejected by the House leadership.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally decided
to attempt to remove the president from
office on the basis of a disputed phone
call to President Volodymyr Zelen sky of
Ukraine—a country that most Americans
would struggle to find on a map. The
House opted for an impeachment proceeding
that inadvertently raised the possibility that
a former Democratic vice president (who is currently
seeking the party’s presidential nomination) had
his own corrupt dealings in Ukraine.
The proceedings have raised the question of
whether the Democratic establishment, working
with its close allies in the intelligence community, is
fit to govern the country. Trump, in the meantime,
plays to the public’s anti-interventionist sentiment
with his customary lies, promising to bring troops
home while sending even more of them abroad.
After a botched impeachment process that leaves
Trump even more electable, we come to the disastrous
and, for a grassroots Iowa Democrat, deeply
humiliating failure of the state Democratic Party
to properly count the votes in a set of caucuses that
have never been more important.
The blame for this lies squarely with the leadership
of the state party in Des Moines. It holds itself accountable primarily to Iowa’s Democratic
elected officials, who are almost unanimous in their
willingness to endorse anybody but Bernie Sanders.
The state party gave its contract for reporting the
results to an untested start-up with close ties to the
Democratic establishment. The one possible good
that could come from the indefensible failure to
deliver the results in a timely way is the replacement
of the caucuses with a primary run by state election
officials rather than stressed-out party volunteers.
As Hillary Clinton pointed out after
her loss to Barack Obama and again
days before this year’s Iowa contest, the
caucuses disenfranchise working people,
parents with young children, and the
elderly. As they’ve become larger, the image
of an idyllic Norman Rockwell–style
town meeting where discussions occur
among neighbors has become ridiculous.
The caucus that I helped organize in
Iowa City had well over 600 people present
and counted, but dozens left early after signing
in, fed up with the wait. Others were deterred by
interminable lines on the sidewalk outside and
never registered.
This is not an argument against an early primary
in a small state with an opportunity for retail politics,
which is valuable if only to prevent oligarchs
from buying the nomination by spending their
billions on media. Proposals to rotate a first-in-thenation
primary among different states have merit.
This is a problem that could be solved with strong
and competent party leadership. The current Democratic
establishment, though, will probably find
yet another way to make things worse rather than
better.
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