Unconventional #27: How realistic is Sanders’ convention wish list?
Little-known fact: Bernie Sanders is still (technically) running for president.
It’s true. Even though you no longer see him railing against billionaires on TV, and even though he delivered what sounded a lot like a concession speech two days after losing the June 7 make-or-break California primary by nearly 13 percentage points, the senator from Vermont still hasn’t officially dropped out of the Democratic primary contest.
He isn’t attacking Hillary Clinton anymore. He isn’t fantasizing about flipping superdelegates. He’s abandoned all pretense of nabbing the nomination in Philadelphia.
And yet Sanders is still charging U.S. taxpayers more than $38,000 a day to continue his campaign.
Why? Because Bernie has a wish list.
In a series of statements over the past few weeks, Sanders has made it abundantly clear what he wants from Clinton and the Democratic establishment before he will concede, endorse, and “unite the party.”
With 33 days to go until Philly, Unconventional decided to rank each item on Sanders’ wish list — from most realistic to least — based on the current political climate and the progress (or lack of progress) by him and his team so far.
We’ll regularly revisit these rankings as the convention approaches.
Replace DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz
In Sanders’ words: “We need a person at the leadership of the DNC who is vigorously supporting and out working to bring people into the political process. Yeah, I know, political parties need money. But it is more important that we have energy, that we have young people, that we have working-class people who are going to participate in the political process and fight for their kids and for their parents.”
Odds: Sanders may already be well on his way to getting his wish. Last Thursday, the Clinton campaign effectively took control of the DNC, sidelining Wasserman Schultz and installing Brandon Davis, national political director for the Service Employees International Union, to oversee the party’s day-to-day operations in her stead.
There is nothing unusual about this. The same thing happened in 2008 when Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination and quickly replaced then-DNC Chair Howard Dean with his trusted aide Paul Tewes.
Assuming Clinton wins in November, the question is what happens after Election Day, when Davis’ stint is scheduled to end. Will Clinton announce a new DNC chair in a bid for unity, perhaps at the convention? Or will she hope the intraparty opposition dies down and offer Wasserman Schultz — long seen as a Hillary loyalist, especially among disgruntled Sanders supporters — the opportunity to keep her job?
We’re guessing that Debbie will go — perhaps sooner rather than later. In May, CNNreported that “three Democrats with ties to the party’s power centers — President Barack Obama, Clinton and Sanders — made clear that few are rooting for Wasserman Schultz’s survival at the DNC.”
“If this is the one thing that provides unity, they would take that trade,” said one senior Democratic strategist who had spoken to the White House. “Nobody is rushing to keep her.”
Or as another Democratic adviser close to Clinton said of Wasserman Schultz, “There is an exhaustion that comes with dealing with her.”
Reduce the role of superdelegates
In Sanders’ words: “We also need obviously to get rid of superdelegates. The idea that we had 400 superdelegates pledged to a candidate some eight months or more before the first ballot was cast is, to my mind, absurd. And we need to also make sure that superdelegates do not live in a world of their own but reflect the views of the people of their own state.”
Odds: Improving. No matter what Sanders says, the Democratic Party is unlikely to “get rid” of superdelegates altogether. Achieving that goal would require the superdelegates to vote themselves out of existence, and that’s not something they’re interested in doing.
Superdelegates are, for the most part, sitting governors, senators, and House members. They want to attend the convention and participate in the debates over the rules, the platform, and other issues. They want to have a say in the direction of their party. And they don’t want to have to run against their own constituents, which is the only way they could become regular old pledged delegates.
(This was precisely the rationale cited earlier this week by the Congressional Black Caucus in a letter to both the Sanders and Clinton campaigns explaining why they “recently voted unanimously to oppose any suggestion or idea to eliminate the category of Unpledged Delegate to the Democratic National Convention.”)
Signs are emerging, however, than many superdelegates might be willing to reduce or even relinquish their biggest superpower — namely, the power to overturn a primary result they find distasteful. Over the last week, Politico interviewed 20 of Sanders’ Senate colleagues and found that “more than half … support at least lowering the number of superdelegates, and all but two said the party should take up the matter at next month’s convention in Philadelphia, despite the potential for a high-profile intraparty feud at a critical moment in the campaign.”
Even Clinton’s prospective running mates are open to reform.
“I’m a superdelegate, and I don’t believe in superdelegates,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
“Having party leaders participate is fine, but I think having some connection to the outcome of your state’s process is smart,” said Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine.
“I’m fine with whatever they negotiate,” added Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. “I just don’t care about superdelegates. I don’t care about the whole thing.”
Given that both California and Nebraska Democrats voted against the existing superdelegate system at their state conventions this weekend, it’s looking increasingly likely that some sort of reform may emerge from Philadelphia. Perhaps it will be a reduction in number. Or perhaps it will be a new rule that binds the superdelegates to “reflect the views of the people of their own state,” as Sanders himself has demanded. We shall see.
Make the Democratic Party platform more liberal
In Sanders’ words: “We need, at the Democratic National Convention, to approve a progressive platform: the most progressive platform ever passed by the Democratic Party; a platform which makes it crystal clear that the Democratic Party is, in fact, on the side of working people.”
Odds: The 2016 Democratic platform may end up being more liberal than its 2012 or 2008 predecessors. But that’s because the party in general — and Clinton specifically — has already shifted to the left over the course of the campaign, in large part because of Sanders. Any progressive changes to the existing platform will probably be ones that Clinton has already signaled her comfort with — an emphasis on fair trade rather than free trade, opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline and an increase in the national minimum wage — rather than last-minute concessions extracted by Sanders in exchange for his endorsement.
Sanders simply doesn’t have much leverage left. He does, however, have a little. Last month, Sanders was awarded more seats on the Platform Drafting Committee than any runner-up in Democratic history; several of his appointees — philosophy professor Cornel West; Arab American Institute president James Zogby; Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison — are notably less pro-Israel than the current party platform, or Clinton for that matter. If Sanders & Co. were to threaten an ugly floor flight over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and at the initial platform hearings, West and Zogby have already clashed with Clinton supporters over terms like “occupation” — it’s possible that Team Clinton might try to convince them to back down by ceding ground elsewhere.
This would be a risky move on Sanders’ part; Clinton has already rejected many of his demands, including free public-college tuition and single-payer health care, and much of the rest of the party would not look kindly on a floor fight. But who knows how far the senator is willing to go to satisfy his supporters — and to secure his progressive legacy?
Reform the Democratic voting process
In Sanders’ words: “We need real electoral reform within the Democratic Party. And that means — among many, many other things — open primaries. The idea that in the State of New York, the great State of New York, 3 million people could not participate in helping to select who the Democratic or Republican candidate for president would be because they had registered as an independent not as a Democrat or a Republican is incomprehensible.”
Odds: Not going to happen. Most Democratic Party regulars — aka delegates — want to strengthen the Democratic Party. They want to attract converts. But while allowing non-Democrats to vote in a Democratic primary might get voters invested in the candidate they support, it won’t get them invested in the party. It doesn’t help the party identify regular voters; it doesn’t build loyalty to the ticket.
Right now, some states have open primaries; others are closed. It’s up to each state party — the organization paying for the primary, incidentally — to decide which system it prefers. It’s almost impossible to imagine these delegations voting in Philadelphia to abandon their autonomy in favor of a 50-state open-primary requirement.
As for Sanders’ other major electoral reform proposal — same-day voter registration — most Democrats support it. In fact, Clinton has gone one step further and said that all Americans should be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18 (unless they opt out). But state governments set voter registration laws — not the Democratic Party. Sanders is barking up the wrong tree here.
