Democratic Primaries

I would point out that my reference to 'backroom deals' in exchanges with 'Don1' (if recollection serves as to who I was addressing), referred to his proposal that some deal be struck in which 'progressives' (ie 'Bernie') would be allocated delegates in proportion to what he conceived as their actual strength within the Party, and that this would be a sort of price for 'Bernie' ceasing his attempts at sabotage. This he proclaimed as 'DEMOCRACY', while to me it is obviously the very picture of a backroom deal, and one I cannot imagine there being any mechanism for executing with the delegate selection practices of the Democratic Party. It would be, if struck and followed through on, the antithesis of democratic practice.

Not that you have mis-characterized my view of how our Congress works, mind.

Regarding composition of the Party electorate, I do not agree with you, but this must necessarily be a question of judgement on which people of good will may differ. As a leftist, I consider in present circumstances the first duty of anyone on the left, from the most radical to the mildest liberal, is to beat back the christo-fascist right. Nothing towards the advance of policies left, progressive, and liberal people desire can be achieved unless this is done first. I have no patience whatever for anyone calling himself or herself a leftist who cannot see this.

There will never be reflected in the Democratic Party platform any idea or program based on the view that the two major parties are equal or effectively equivalent. People who hold to that view consign themselves to a powerless political existence. Their ideas will never be reflected, and frankly are sufficiently false to fact they ought not to be reflected. That is a view pumped out and plumped up by ivory tower radicals, and even if they live in grungy walk-ups with holes in the soles of their shoes they are in fact ivory tower types. 'Bernie' began as one of these sorts, and has learned over the years to perform as a poor imitation of a 'real' politician, at least if one does not look too close. He remains at heart a Marxist radical, and anyone familiar with the sort can readily discern its lineaments in his words and manner.

I regret that your cousins take such a view, and wish they would not. But people cannot be argued out of unreasonable beliefs, though sometimes they can be shocked out of them. People who hold that view voluntarily ostracize themselves from the political life of the country. Even were one to concede for purposes of argument that there might be some sense in which that view was 'right' it would not matter. To hold it is to agree not to participate in the political system as it exists. Multi-party parliamentary systems form their coalitions after an election; our two party 'first past the post' system requires coalitions be formed prior to elections. The Democratic Party is the only coalition that will include people of the left, and the only mass vehicle by which the worst excesses of christo-fascist reaction on the right can be opposed with any effect.