17 June 2016
Institutionalized discrimination in the
Democratic Party’s delegate selection process
Saturday last, as Pete Talbot has reported at Intelligent Discontent, the national campaign for Bernie Sanders imposed its will on the selection of Montana’s pledged to Sanders delegates to the Democratic National Convention. I found the intervention outrageous, and still do, but the party’s rules allow, indeed seem to mandate, such meddling to assure that Montana’s delegation to the convention is properly “diverse.”
Here, in a passage from the delegate selection rules (PDF) for Oregon’s Democratic Party, is how delegate diversity will be assured:
d. Priority of Consideration
- In the selection of the at-large delegation, priority of consideration shall be given to African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, members of the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender community, youth, people with disabilities, and women. (Rule 6.A.)
- In order to continue the Democratic Party’s ongoing efforts to include groups historically underrepresented in the Democratic Party’s affairs and to assist in the achievement of full participation by these groups, priority of consideration shall be given other groups by virtue of race/ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. (Rule 5.C, Rule 6.A.3 & Reg. 4.7)
- The election of at-large delegates and alternates shall be used, if necessary, to achieve the equal division of positions between men and women, and may be used to achieve the representation goals established in the Affirmative Action section of this Plan. (Rule 6.A & Rule 6.C)
Does this mean that white men need not apply? No. That the Democrats are no party for white men? Possibly not. But it does mean that in the delegate selection process, white men are, figuratively speaking, crammed into the back of the bus, where they are expected to stay and to stay silent.
This is identity politics at it ugliest and most dangerous. In the pursuit of inclusion for groups believed to have been previously marginalized, the party now marginalizes white men, especially white working class men, who may turn to Donald Trump in frustration and anger.
Political writer Joe Klein wrote about this in Time four years ago:
But let me afflict the comfortable. The Democrats have a serious problem. It is a problem that stems from the party’s greatest strength: its long-term support for inclusion and equal rights for all, its support of racial integration and equal rights for women and homosexuals and its humane stand on immigration reform. Those heroic positions, which I celebrate, cost the Democrats more than a few elections in the past. And they caused an understandable, if misguided, overreaction within the party — a drift toward identity politics, toward special pleading. Inclusion became exclusive. The Democratic National Committee officially recognizes 14 caucuses or “communities,” most having to do with race, gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity.
Many of these groups had a purpose in the beginning. African Americans had the ultimate historic complaint. The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender caucus (LGBT, if you’re scoring at home) worked effectively and won the Democrats’ support for a full roster of human rights, including marriage. The women’s caucus represented perhaps the most successful civil rights movement of our lifetime. Women are moving beyond equality now toward dominance as more of them graduate from college than men — and fewer of them drop out of high school — and take their places atop major companies, government agencies and, someday soon, the presidency.
But if I’m a plain old white insurance salesman, I look at the Democratic Party and say, “What’s in it for me?” These feelings are clearly intensifying in this presidential campaign. They are bound to increase, perhaps dangerously, as the white electoral majority (currently about 70%) diminishes over time. If the Democratic Party truly wants to be a party of inclusion, it must reach out to those who are currently excluded from its identity politics. It needs to disband its caucuses. It needs to say, We are proud of our racial and ethnic backgrounds, our different religions, our lifestyle differences. But the things that unite us are more important than the things that divide us. We have only one caucus — the American caucus.
At the Montana Democratic convention in Helena last week, well meaning people, good people, made allowed by and mandated by the rules decisions that were high-handed and discriminatory in pursuit of “diversity.” Although some were dismayed by the process, I suspect that all agreed that “diversity” was a goal so important that employing discrimination to attain it was justified and proper.
That’s the moral and political blind spot of identity politics. The inclusion achieved by creating an identity caucus means that others — in particular, the white working class that once was the heart of the Democratic Party — are excluded. In striving for “diversity,” Democrats are practicing a kind of discrimination that helps Donald Trump.
My enlightened self-interest requires continuing to vote for Democrats. But the Democratic Party itself has become no party for this man.