Conversation #24  The Democrat Diaries November 26, 2017
Channel: The Grace and Paul Pottscast
Date: 2017-11-26

We recorded this one on November 18 so that it would be ready to go on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Paul's been working on notes for an epic rant, and had a lot to get off his chest, so this one is mostly Paul, with Grace offering commentary. This rant has been building up for a while: it's Paul's response to Donna Brazile's revelations that Hillary Clinton was in control of the DNC almost a year before the primaries, and using it to allow big donors to vastly exceed the limits on individual donations, and donate up to $660,000.00 instead of $2,700.00.

Why is this important and why does it spell the end of the Democratic Party? And what happens next? To unpack that Paul briefly reviews the history of political parties in America, starting with Washington's farewell address, and how the parties have changed over time due to realigning elections or insurgencies, either from inside the existing parties or led by third parties, and how the 30- to 40-year cycle of party systems may have come to an end with _Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission_.

Brazile is no hero, but without whistleblowers we have no chance of keeping organizations like the DNC from becoming entirely corrupt Potemkin Villages. Meanwhile, between this new revelation and several old ones, the fundamental hypocrisy of anyone supporting the DNC while criticizing the Republican establishment for corruption is starkly illuminated. The DNC even argued in court that it had no obligation to deliver a fair primary. The upshot is that no one can claim with a straight face that Sanders won the primary fair and square, when there was no impartiality whatsoever, and no one can claim that we should stop trying to re-litigate the election, when it was never litigated fairly to begin with.

There will be no functioning Democratic Party until we have truth and reconciliation in America, and a long-overdue change in our parties, either in the form of a realigning election where the Democratic party dramatically changes, or by a third party supplanting the Democratic party until we eventually stabilize on two parties again. But none of this can happen until we face up to, and take steps to reduce, the distorting power of big money in our elections.

The blog post for this show, with a link to the MP3 file, a link to the podcast feed, and any additional show notes, can be found here: http://pottscast.blogspot.com/2017/11/conversation-24-democrat-diaries.html