Democratic Disaster in Nevada

Trump Wins Nevada Convention!   (The Democratic Party Convention)

Democrats are self destructing badly. 

Peter Sage Introduction of Guest Post:    

The Guest Post below, by Thad Guyer, describes Rachel Maddow's coverage of the Nevada Convention and its aftermath.   I heard a similar discussion on a nationally syndicated show, "To the Point", on NPR this afternoon.  The host, Warren Olney, kept trying to encourage various participants in the Nevada Convention to assure listeners that this was a small rift, and the prelude to a great reconciliation.   No one cooperated.   "I will never, never vote for Hillary Clinton," a Nevada delegate said.  He said the Sanders movement was creating a revolution by rejecting corrupt political parties, both of them.  

Last year's question.  Now he has the love, but still scorns the party.

The host kept holding up Trump as an opponent to rally around--surely Democrats will unite when the choice is between Hillary and Trump--but for many the answer was "no" because he was missing their point.  They do not want reform.  They do not want to pick and choose the better parts within the political system.  They want to eliminate the system, because it is fundamentally corrupt.  They were not--and are not--Democrats, and neither was Bernie, and that is where they want to be.

The Republican Party has just succumbed to a hostile takeover.   Trump decapitated the old leadership and old ideas but Republican Party brand survives and Trump is now reshaping what it stands for.   The Democratic Party is in worse shape than the GOP because Democrats are at risk of losing one of the big legs of their coalition: the young progressives.   Those young people were not around to watch Bill and Hillary Clinton pay their dues, Hillary getting criticized for wanting to work, for keeping the name Rodham, for enduring all the criticisms of the "vast right wing conspiracy."   Bernie has motivated people's aspirations and ideals.    They don't want to hear about compromises, or incremental change or party institutions to to secure the election of down-ballot candidates to create legislative majorities.  

Institutions make possible the Democratic Senate and House who can pass a progressive agenda for an idealist president.   Institutions made possible governors and state legislatures which might adopt the enabling legislation to make federal programs work.  (Obamacare could be subverted and made unworkable because of Congressional opposition at the federal level and the refusal of states with Republican governors or legislatures to accept Medicaid waivers.)  But these issues miss the point for the people Bernie Sanders is motivating.  They want to reach past those practical roadblocks, and they see those roadblocks as evidence of a broken system, thereby strengthening their case.  They want political revolution.

Thad Guyer's Guest Post will be the most alarming and discouraging of any of his comments this year, and I have heard from readers who have thought he was too alarmist.  I  post Guyer's commentary without calm reassurances that Guyer is overstating the case and that it will all work out.  

It may not work out.  I agree with Guyer.   

Trump is a formidable political warrior who is busy discredited and delegitimizing Hillary in today's news cycle.   Still, he has a difficult political map if the Democratic Party holds the coalitions it held in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012.  Demography is creating many more Democrats and Trump's campaign has motivated them, so Democrats could get their 271 electoral votes.  But a fractured Democratic Party missing a part of its progressive wing loses battleground states and it could be defeated in a general election even by someone far less skilled than Trump.  

Democrats are fracturing.  The Democratic Party is not owed progressive votes; they are owned by the citizen who places them where he or she chooses.   Sanders has made a point for decades that he was not a Democrat.   The effect of his rhetoric is to make the young progressive wing of the party discontented with Democrats.   Sanders will eventually endorse Hillary, but he has inspired a generation that, like the Bernie of old, is not a Democrat and is proud of it.

Thad Guyer is an attorney specializing in helping whistleblowing employees.  He pays close attention to the kinds of messages persuasive to judges and juries.

Guest Post by Thad Guyer

Thad Guyer:  Guest Post

"Trump Wins Nevada Convention."

I’m stealing that line from Angie Morelli, a Sanders activist who proclaimed it on the Rachel Maddow show last night. When Maddow lobbed Morelli a softball question of “whether the Nevada convention’s enthusiasm for democratic debate would make the party even stronger in the end”, Morelli answered that this is the “wrong question”, and that the right question is who is going to reform a corrupt party establishment that won’t even receive reform petitions from the people. Bang, bam! She waved around a jumbled stack of papers strikingly similar to Sanders’ trademark disheveled hair! It was metaphorical bravado, Trump’s hair being orderly and coiffed, Hillary’s being what youngsters call “the helmet head”, and Bernie’s being an anarchical mess. Hair tells the whole story of this election, I guess. 


 Morelli is right. Donald won the Nevada convention. He could only have hoped that the “death threat” Sanders people would have made his own Trump rally violence seem not so bad. Instead, the Nevada convention literally mainstreamed Trump, he’s just like Democrats, the Sanders people showed. The entire Maddow show was filled with teeth gnashing democratic commentators decrying the diversion from the real story, i.e., Trump urging a lovely model to change into a bikini at his mansion. 

Democrats are in desperate disarray in what Maddow called “a fun night”, hosting DNC Debbie Wasserman Shultz having none of the fun, as she slashed and punched at who—Sanders--not Trump. Sanders is now the enemy of the Democratic establishment, a selfish socialist who could care less about “democratic unity”, the DNC chair denounced. Soon she might embrace Donald Trump as the only viable “#StopSanders” candidate. Wasserman’s claim that she and DNC are “neutral” in the Hillary vs. Sanders contest was not just ridiculous sounding, it was as absurd as Trump denying he was the mysterious “John Miller” publicist for him 20 years ago.

Trump-Kelly-Fox back in sync

For now, all forces are conspiring to elect Donald Trump. (1) Paul Ryan was left “hopeful” if not giddy after kissing Trump’s ring. (2) Megyn Kelly got back together with the mogul under the pandering rubric “let’s talk about us now”. She smiled when Trump apologized for retweeting her as a “bimbo” with the apology being “come on, you have been called worse Megyn, much, much worse”. (3) Democrat Angie Morelli basically warned that a vote for Hillary is vote for Trump, and quoted a top state party official as saying the Nevada process “was not intended to be democratic”. (4) Maddow then played a whole string of PriorityUSA Trump quotes about women’s bodies, noting that these ads totally failed to change anyone’s mind. And (5) the New York Times gave Trump a twofer of (a) a “hit piece” about him being a womanizer then loudly discredited by CNN with an interview of the NYT so-called primary source; and (b) in counter-balance a flattering NYT article about Trump’s mastery of the campaign, the deal, and winning with people, entitled “Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride”, Click here to read the NY Times story, May 18, 2016). 

The Times reporter featured Trump’s executive character in a way Trump could not have hoped even “John Miller” could have gotten across so effectively. Look at the photos in the Times article, they are glamour shots of Trump, Hope Davis his media director, and chief of staff Corey Lewandowski. Candidates could only dream of having such photos published by the NYT.

Maddow’s MSNBC show was as exciting last night as a real Trump rally. As Trump might say “get ‘em out”, Maddow then mocked and humiliated Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse for their “adorable, pointless resistance to Donald Trump”. Yes, get ‘em out, Rachel!

Donald Trump will get around to uniting Republicans only assuming Democrats don’t do that for him first. But right now he is too busy uniting Democrats against Clinton and the party’s own establishment.