DNC chairman aims for diversity with delegate nominations

[Jim Lane]

126. There are two ways to be done with the fighting.

One is the disastrous path of purging any dissidents from the party. I don't care if you call them progressives or populists or Berniecrats or just "people who opposed Perez's candidacy for DNC Chair". The real issue is the general conduct of the people in power in the Democratic Party -- including filling at-large DNC seats, the composition of important committees, the superdelegate rule, exclusivity rule for debates, and much else. If the overall effect is to make "those people" (however defined) unwelcome, then some of them will leave the party. If you join in DU's popular pastime of disparaging Jill Stein, then it's logical to go beyond online criticisms and think about what concrete steps will lead people to vote for Democrats rather than Greens.

That brings us to the other way to be done with the fighting. That's to remove the unfairness and even the perception of unfairness, so that even people whose candidate wasn't nominated last year feel that they have a home in the Democratic Party. That path is admittedly more difficult. Its advantage is that it's more likely to lead to electoral success.

There is a third course that's being attempted but that won't stop the fighting. That's for one side to tell the other side that it should just shut up. That course won't work because people who are inclined to become active, to seek party posts, or even to post on message boards aren't the types to just shut up.