Here’s Why Democrats Are Way Better at Managing Their Populist Fringe

MSNBC host Symone Sanders aroused some Twitter controversy on Friday’s episode of Morning Joe, when she mocked the notion that Robert F. Kennedy—who is polling at around 20 percent in early Democratic primary polls—might pose a problem for Joe Biden.

“The Democratic National Committee will not facilitate a primary process,” Sanders, the former chief spokeswoman for Vice President Kamala Harris, averred. “There will not be a debate stage for Bobby Kennedy,” she continued, “there will be no debating.”

There will be no debating? This declaration sounded almost un-American. Who could possibly be against robust debate? I wasn’t the only one who had that gut response. “I’m no fan of RFK, and yet one might expect the Democratic Party to be more… oh, I don’t know… democratic,” tweeted former Associated Press Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier.

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Others pointed out that Sanders was merely stating the obvious: “As far as I know, [an] incumbent prez has *never* debated a challenger from [the] same party,” tweeted prominent author and journalist James Fallows. As Fallows pointed out, it would actually be unprecedented if Biden did debate RFK, Jr.

Still, Sanders went a little further than that, noting that “The Democratic National Committee will not facilitate a primary process…”

What exactly did that mean? Was it a Kinsley gaffe or just Sanders (once again) stating the obvious? I’m not sure.

The more I thought about it, the more something else occurred to me. While it sounds almost sacrilegious for a political party to essentially rig the nomination, that’s exactly what they should be doing.

Finally, someone said it!

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We may live in a representative democracy, but political parties (like military units, corporations, and families) are not democracies. Indeed, they couldn’t function well if they tried to be.

Political parties are private clubs. As such, the party decides (or at least, it used to). Whether this vetting was done in a smoke-filled back room, or some less carcinogenic location, we were better off when strong political parties (elites and bosses) served this vital gatekeeping function.

Donald Trump’s hijacking of the Republican Party is all the evidence one needs to conclude that small-“d” democracy—within the context of a presidential primary, at least—is not an unmitigated good.

It’s not perfectly analogous to the RFK, Jr. situation (since there was no incumbent Republican president at the time), but in hindsight, the Republican Party should have simply disqualified Trump from competing for the 2016 GOP nomination, much less, appearing in a debate on stage. Trump had, after all, been a Democratic donor and (more to the point) he had refused to pledge his support for the eventual GOP nominee (that is, before then-RNC Chairman Reince Priebus bent the knee and traveled to Trump Tower to get Trump’s signature).

Of course, Trump subsequently abandoned that pledge, too. Trump’s behavior provided an obvious pretext to preclude his candidacy, yet nobody seized the opportunity to do so.

Sure, this heavy-handed move would have created a huge populist backlash against the Republican establishment. Trump might even have run a third party campaign that doomed… someone, probably Ted Cruz. Still, it’s hard to believe things would have turned out any worse for the Republican Party (nevermind America) in the long run.

What I’m saying is that Democrats are wise to do whatever they can to ensure that their sitting president, Joe Biden, faces little opposition (just as, let’s be honest, Republicans canceled primary elections in 2020), and that a populist crank like RFK, Jr., doesn’t catch fire.

This is both good for Democrats and (considering RFK, Jr’s, politics) for America.

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Whereas the elites in the Republican Party simply rolled over for Trump and the mob to seize control of the party apparatus, modern Democrats are, ironically, less democratic than Republicans.

This is a feature, not a bug.

There are probably three main reasons why Democrats turned out to be less susceptible to the siren call of the populist zeitgeist than Republicans.

First, the Democrats’ African-American base provided a moderating influence on the party. Joe Biden’s 2020 primary win in South Carolina—after getting shellacked in both Iowa and New Hampshire—is proof that this mattered.

Second, liberal Americans generally consume their media from mainstream media outlets. Although liberally biased, these outlets are still wedded to old-fashioned journalistic ethics and institutions. For example, MSNBC is under the NBC umbrella, which, no doubt, provides a moderating influence (or at least, keeps them wedded to reality). Conversely, conservatives created alternative media outlets. Unmoored from tradition and institutions, these alternative outlets became alternative realities.

And lastly—to the point of this column—the establishment in the Democratic establishment has been more aggressive and effective at fighting (and co-opting) populist insurgents on the left.

This hasn’t always been pretty. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to step down as head of the Democratic National Committee after leaked emails showed the DNC was pushing an anti-Bernie Sanders article.

And after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took on The Squad for voting against a border aid bill, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) suggested Pelosi was racist for “singling out” women of color.

Call them heavy-handed elites if you like, but Sanders did not wrest control of the Democratic primary from Hillary Clinton, and (unlike the GOP, where the inmates run the asylum) The Squad hasn’t yet come close to taking over the Democratic Party.

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Indeed, Pelosi was able to hand over the speakership to her chosen successor, without the messiness of a leadership fight. Meanwhile, the left’s populist insurgents have generally become team players. Most recently, AOC announced she would not challenge New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in a primary.

If only the Republican establishment had been this tough and this canny.

I’m not sure whether it was smart for Symone Sanders to be so transparent about the DNC’s plans to effectively shut down RFK, Jr. But I am sure that the DNC is smart to do it.

Unlike the Republican Party (and Fox News), they are more committed to preserving their party than they are worried about “respecting” the audience.

In the movie Moneyball, Brad Pitt (as Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane) declares, “The fans don’t run my ballclub.” Today, that is true of just one of our two political parties in America. And ironically, it’s the Democratic Party.

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