Pierce: The Democrats' Unity Commision Isn't Doing Much Unifying

[mcar]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a57208/democratic-unity-commission-problems/

This will be shorter than the usual shuttering of the shebeen, but I wanted to make note that the Democratic Unity Commission is meeting in Chicago and people are being silly in the face of the ongoing catastrophe that is the current administration. There is an actual fight going on over whether the Democratic Party should change entirely to a system of open primaries or, even more horribly worse, a system of caucuses, to pick its presidential nominee.

Point The First: Who cares in 2017? The house is burning down and you're vetting the firemen.

Point The Second: Don't do this. A political party that conducts open primaries is a political party just begging to be hijacked by the loudest voice in the room and/or ratfcked by any half-witted operative on the other side. Your party's nominating process should be kept within your party. And caucuses are completely worthless, both in terms of practical politics and in terms of the basic function of finding a nominee.

Point The Third and Final: To go to open primaries and caucuses will work in many states to dilute the influence of minority voters, which is the true Democratic base and has been for several cycles now. I realize that the Sanders campaign was a transformative experience for a lot of people. But there is nothing in its history or its outcome that would lead anyone to believe that it was successful at anything except pushing the platform to the left, which was a very good thing. The 2016 Democratic platform was the most progressive of my lifetime.