After the 2008 election, it was clear to many that Hillary's historically powerful Top Down campaign was defeated by Obama's massively more effective Bottom Up campaign, which used social media and tools that enabled supporters to cooperate with the campaign, sharing their energy and support.
With the pollsters all predicting Hillary's victory, I was getting ready to say that she'd mastered the Bottom angle while strengthening her Top Down approach. Boy was I wrong. It turns out that her Top Down domination was a major contributor to the Democratic party's abject failure at the polls.
The fact that she injected her Top Down campaign into the DNC and Democratic leadership, and that the leadership allowed and abetted it is key to the absolute disaster the Democratic party experienced.
If a truly Bottom Up, democratic process had been in place, there is no question that Hillary would have been defeated by Bernie Sanders. If there were no Top Down superdelegates, the mainstream media would not have been able to hammer her huge lead throughout the 14 months leading up to the convention. If the Democratic party had not allowed, through it's silence and cooperation, the massive collusion between MSNBC and CNN and the Clinton campaign, the coverage would have been very different.
If the Democratic leadership had paid attention to the massive crowd-filled arenas Bernie Sanders filled compared to the half filled high school gymnasiums Hillary half-fillled-- and realized that the crowds did mean something.
What we've learned is that the Top Down leadership system the Democrats, starting with Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Debra Wasserman-Schultz was a failure caused by hubris, arrogance, disrespect for constituents and the allowing of far too much influence from big donors.
Bernie Sanders would start each of his huge rallies with the statement, "Change doesn't happen from the Top Down. It happens from the Bottom Up. That should be the rallying cry for the people in the streets protesting Trump. It should be the rallying cry for constituents betrayed by Democratic leaders who inflicted Hillary, a candidate they knew was historically hated and untrusted, upon them.
The Superdelegate system was created because arrogant Democratic leaders didn't trust the voters. It should be totally dismantled. Rules should be put in place that make it impossible for a partisan DNC head like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz or Donna Brazile to take the position. Rules should be put in place that prevent uneven treatment of primary candidates. Keep in mind that the DNC and the Democratic party leadership played a huge role in picking many of the Senate candidates who were defeated-- McGinty in PA, Murphy in FL, for example .That has to stop.
Republicans, where you might think autocratic thinking would dominate, prevailed because they respected the power of Bottom Up. They respected the crowd.
It is time for the Democratic, progressive grassroots to take the Democratic party back from autocratic, arrogant leaders who have proven to be losers who have no respect for the will of the people. Bottom Up should be the byword for the new leadership in the Democratic party.
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