The results of our two differing approaches could not have been more contrasting. While Wasserman-Schultz's approach did deliver a historically unique legislative majority to the Independents, none of the policies it enacted during that period had any lasting effect in terms of systemic change, and within a year the "System" had returned to its position of unquestioned and seemingly unchallengeable absolutism.
During their historically brief legislative minority, however, the machine would have its party bosses sitting in the wings keeping an eye out while an under-boss was employed to stand at the front of the chambers giving the imperial thumbs down signal to keep the senators voting the party line. That practice only came to an end a few years later in the period during which I assumed the position of Minority Leader of the Senate.
The lessons of her student politics days clearly were not lost on Wasserman-Schultz who appears to have applied the model of internal party governance she learned from the success of the campus machine. This should be of no surprise to those who paid attention to Watergate as many of the players learned what they did in and for the White House in their days in student government. Bernstein and Woodward graphically documented in their book, All The President's Men, the confessions of Nixon's head of dirty tricks, Donald Segretti, as he described the work as a continuation of what he called "ratfucking" that he and those around him learned in their undergraduate days in the USC (University of Southern California) student government elections.
Wasserman-Schultz has similarly taken on the role of Party Boss learned in her student days, and appears to have employed the very Under-Boss method of giving the aggressive thumbs down to ensure loyalty of voting members to the party/campaign dictates -- in a process which no longer even bothers to try and present even a facade of either democratic deliberation or a separation between the Party (DNC) and the Clinton campaign.
Wendy Sherman performed her thumb-duties strategically positioned only a few feet from where Wasserman-Schultz, as DNC chair, sat facing the committee members -- just out of view of the C-SPAN cameras. Wasserman-Schultz was not the chair of the Platform Committee, that role was given by her to Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy.
The irony of Malloy's chairmanship has not gone unnoticed as Sanders' delegates have fought, unsuccessfully, to strengthen the platform's health care planks and to support the concept of a single-payer system. Malloy is currently at the center of a corruption scandal that has only emerged due to the undaunted pursuit of public records including damaging emails, often unlawfully denied and withheld by Connecticut officials, by IBTimes reporter David Sirota. Sirota's work exposing the backroom deals of Malloy and his administration to pave the way for a merger between two of the nation's health insurance giants, Anthem and Signa, has resulted in a series of recent official investigations into whether the regulatory process was rigged.
Sherman too is tainted by connections with email
scandals. The former Under Secretary of
State, who is not a member of the full Platform Committee, became a central
figure in the emergence of evidence that as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
was using an unsecured Blackberry to send sensitive emails during diplomatic
negotiations overseas. Just as the Iowa
caucuses were beginning the official start of the primary season a video
emerged of a press conference where Sherman boasted that Clinton was using her
Blackberry to send emails "that would never be on an unclassified system."
Sherman was one of Clinton's appointments to the elite Platform Drafting
Committee. In that role she too became
the brunt of the ire of Sanders' supporters both on the Committee and in the
public as she led the hardline opposition to several amendments in the earlier
meetings in St. Louis. Sherman led the
Clinton delegation members in firmly opposing language such as referring to the
situation in Israel with regard to the Palestinians as an "Occupation" and in
rejection of anti-war language in the platform that, as she said, would
inappropriately "tie the hands" of the future president in utilizing war as a
foreign policy option.
While not having a vote on the Committee this weekend Sherman stepped into the Party Under-Boss role of wielding the imperial thumbs down to try to keep the Clinton delegates firmly in line with what the Party Elite and Clinton Campaign had previously decided would be allowed into the official Party Platform.
What would have gone unnoticed if one was limited to what the C-SPAN cameras recorded for history, however, did not go unnoticed by all who were present in the room. What it clearly showed was that the rhetoric of party unity developing around the platform, even now being suggested by Bernie Sanders himself, is far more fiction than fact. Two amendments that would otherwise be overlooked as irrelevant demonstrate both the undemocratic nature of the approach of the Party and Campaign and the growing, not diminishing, division within the rank and file membership. I will describe what occurred with each of those votes after laying out the context of the atmosphere of the meeting as seen from behind the scenes.
Observing the Show from the Bar
I arrived at the Doubletree Hotel, formerly known in Orlando as the "Twin Towers," located across the road from Universal Studios, late in the first day of the Committee's deliberations. This weekend's hearing is the final stage in the platform process -- before the Convention (Many forget this is another opportunity for amendments, by the delegates convened as the National Convention - the highest and sovereign authority of the Party, who can attempt amendments from the floor. Once a common practice but not really seen since the Convention became little more than a publicly funded week of campaign advertising for the pre-determined nominee in the 1990s).
When I left my house to head to the hotel I knew I would be arriving at the very time set for the conclusion of that first of two day's hearings. But I was not going to observe and report on the official activities within the formal meeting. I was intentionally going to observe the sense of the participants and the informal process that takes place behind the scenes -- more akin to a Hunter S. Thompson Gonzo Journalism approach to covering presidential elections. So arriving late in the day was no problem as I intended to establish my post at the bar -- where the real "politics" usually takes place.
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