This outcome is enraging. The laws are stacked against democracy, and petty bureaucrats will exploit every advantage they have to preserve that power.
But.
Historically, when democracy is corrupt, there are three ways people try to fix it: from the inside, from the outside, and both at once.
Fixing it from the inside alone rarely works — the deck is too stacked.
Fixing it from the outside alone has an even worse track record. If you don’t reach critical mass—a difficult bar to clear—all you do is abandon the field to your opponents. And even if you do reach critical mass, once you win, you have to create new democratic systems, which all-too-often are corrupted by some well-organized subgroup. (High-profile examples of the latter include the USSR and Iran.)
That leaves working both sides at once. You need your capacity for organization and direct action to be outside the corrupt structure, so that you can’t be coopted; but you don’t abandon the internal democratic levers, however weak and corrupted they are, because you want to fix them not smash them.
In this case, that means identifying and organizing as an independent, but continuing to vote in Democratic primaries, and to be open to voting for Democratic candidates when it’s tactically worthwhile.
It’s not as satisfying as “dismiss the Democratic party”, I know. But the rage should be your tool, not you its.
