What's Really Going On?
Stepping back, it's important to put the Unity Reform Commission's work into an historic context. The commission was created after a very tense campaign in which no one in the party's power centers expected Sanders to seriously challenge Clinton. The thinking, as Kozikowski recounted in previous interviews, was that state party chairs agreed to let him run as a Democrat because they thought it would boost the fall vote by a few points. They agreed to let Sanders run only after he agreed to endorse the 2016 nominee.
By the July 2016 convention, however, Sanders had won 46 percent of the delegates awarded in primaries and caucuses. Even though Sanders delegates in Philadelphia were aggrieved and disappointed, they overlooked much of what they had achieved in starting to revive the Democratic Party.
No past presidential campaign in decades won as many changes in the party platform as their campaign did. And it obtained a DNC-sanctioned commission to address the anti-democratic features experienced in 2016, from insider bias by DNC senior staffers, to a superdelegate system that diluted the votes cast in primaries and caucuses, to miserably run caucuses where winners were announced yet vote totals were not disclosed, to voter suppressing registration deadlines for some state primaries and closing those contests to participation by independent voters.
In short, the Democratic Party hadn't shone as large a spotlight on its deficiencies in decades. And its Unity Reform Commission, which had a majority of members appointed by the Clinton campaign and DNC Chair Tom Perez, put forth a slate of reforms that validated the cultural and structural grievances raised by the Sanders team. The process and path to ratification, nonetheless, is slower than the Berniecrats would like.
"Let me tell you where we are in this process," said James Roosevelt, Jr., who was a member of the Reform Commission and co-chairs the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee.
"If you have the Unity Reform Commission report, that is the place it starts," he said. "By the terms of the convention resolution, that report then comes to the Rules and Bylaws Committee. The RBC will decide what portions of the recommendations, all or various portions, it feels should be recommended to the full DNC. If the RBC does not recommend the provisions of the Unity Reform Commission in total, the URC then gets that back before it goes to the full DNC and they can request that the whole thing go as a package to the full DNC, to be considered simultaneously with the recommendations from the RBC."
Starting in late January, the Rules and Bylaws Committee has been meeting to go through the reform proposals, Roosevelt said, saying this is ongoing work and will not be finished before the full DNC next meets in early March.
"Two weekends ago, we had two days -- one full day and one partial day -- where we presented the Unity Reform Commission report to the full RBC, because out of the 32 or so members on the RBC, only about six are on the URC," he said. "We had the chair, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon and the vice chair, Larry Cohen, from Our Revolution, there all day for the full day. And Jen there for the partial day, answering questions about 'Why did you recommend this?' 'What about that?' 'How did you think this would work?' and so on. So that's what we have done so far, which is educate the committee about what the URC recommended."
The initial meetings have focused on the two highest-profile issues: the superdelegates and the caucuses, Roosevelt said.
While the Berniecrats see superdelegate reforms as their top issue, that's not what many state party chairs are focusing on, Kozikowski said. She said the reform commission's failure to make a strong statement to move away from caucuses, which are more poorly run and poorly attended than primaries, was causing the most consternation. Kozikowski has long said she does not expect the full DNC to vote themselves out of power -- by taking away the perk of being a superdelegate after working in the trenches between presidential elections.
While that prediction confirms the fears raised by Berniecrats like Norm Solomon, Roosevelt suggested that wasn't set in stone. He emphasized that the Unity Reform Commission's recommendations come from a body where Berniecrats are a minority of members.
Here's what Roosevelt told AlterNet in an interview last week:
"The Unity Reform Commission report is the product of that group. So already you have people who are not Bernie's people supporting the Unity Reform Commission report. And I think what the Bernie people tend to forget is, it's true, this is a tough vote for members of the full DNC, because you are asking them to take away one of their own functions in the presidential nominating process. However, these are people who have spent their politics careers working and believing that a political party is useful in achieving the right functioning of government. They are therefore also people who believe that maintaining a unified Democratic Party, and keeping people in the tent, is an important value. I would say to the Norm Solomons of the world, step back and think about what really matters to these people [full DNC members]. And realize that they will not just react the way you think of; you think they are like a legislature, they are not. They are believers in a political party as a positive force in the process of government."
Roosevelt made other points suggesting the road to reforming the Democratic Party's presidential nominating process was going to be long -- longer than whatever is the outcome of a vote by the full DNC as early as next fall.
For example, the party could open up primaries to same-day voter registration, participation by independents and other inclusionary details. If those options were in place in New York in 2016, arguably thousands of people who saw Sanders speak at rallies could have voted for him. New York's primary rules prevented that. However, many states' legislatures would have to update their laws to allow these reforms to be implemented, Roosevelt said.
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