patrick.net

Within a few short hours it would become clear to all that the power did not belong with the voters at all but, as Joseph Stalin always liked to stress, with those who counted the votes. These turned out to be befuddled functionaries saddled with vote-monitoring technology that either didn’t work or stopped working when it was horribly evident that Bernie Sanders might be winning. As swiftly became apparent, the vote-counting technology was the work of a company replete with Obama and Clinton loyalists, reaching out from the graveyard of past administrations, their profitable death grip on the party as strong as ever. ...

These formed a representative cross section of the Democratic wing of the corporate political establishment, typified by characters such as Danielle Gray, whose career has consisted of servicing the widely hated health insurance industry as a lawyer, serving as a senior adviser in the Obama White House and then returning to the health insurance sector. ...

Along the way, a majority of delegates rejected a proposal to refuse corporate dollars, despite protests from the populist faction, because, as one told me, ‘That’s where the money is.’ ...

Such behavior becomes easier to understand in light of the fact that the party establishment dislikes and fears its base. They are not unique in this. Republican bosses have always felt contempt for the yahoos at the heart of their support, but they are cleverer at concealing the fact. ...

Given such a legacy, the current party leadership’s eagerness to trace our political ailments to the malign hand of Vladimir Putin becomes easier to understand. Russiagate, and its bastard sibling Ukrainegate, stand squarely in this rich tradition. The 2016 defeat, so obviously the consequence of a rigged nomination and an inept campaign, clearly threatened control by the consultants, lobbyists and congressional officeholders who dominate the party machinery. The people were angry and had to be diverted. Hence the sustained campaign to persuade us that it had all been a Kremlin plot, and that Trump was Putin’s puppet. When the Mueller investigation failed to find a shred of evidence for this, the focus shifted to Ukraine, but Russia was still in the crosshairs. ...

Battered by Trump but menaced by the rising power of the Sandernistas, the Democratic party establishment faces an invidious choice: throw in the towel and endorse the left in hopes of harnessing the only source of grassroots energy available, or sell out to the highest bidder. Stand by to be stopped and frisked by Mayor Mike Bloomberg.