James Giago Davies: They don't know it but the Democratic Party is already dead

Tuesday, November 28, 2017  

Color the Democratic Party dead

By James Giago Davies
Native Sun News Today Columnist
nativesunnews.today

When Bernie Sanders ran for president, I supported his candidacy, although I will never do so again.

The way his campaign staff conducted itself in South Dakota, particularly on the Pine Ridge Reservation, alienated me from that support forever. I had wanted Sanders to run as an Independent, but he chose to run as a Democrat, and since he was a progressive who caucused with the Dems, I didn’t see that as too much of a change.

I was dead wrong.

Even Sanders, who is genuinely concerned about people like you and me, turned to a calculating, cold-blooded, ethically indifferent political machine (the DNC, and his own campaign staff) to get him to the White House. He then supported Hillary Clinton, after she and the DNC had cheated him out of the nomination, at that point abandoning any moral high ground, any claim to being a principled voice for millions of progressive-minded Americans sick of the corrupt system that had destroyed the Democratic Party they had once admired.

The Democratic Party is dead, it just doesn’t know it yet, like a buff athlete walking around with the beginnings of steroid induced brain cancer, thinking he has his whole life ahead of him, when he has less than five years to live.

I will never vote Democrat again.

But it wasn’t Sanders or Hillary Clinton who woke me up to the pervasive takeover of the DNC by powerful, unprincipled special interest. No, that goes back to a disturbing incident at the 2012 Democratic Convention we should never allow ourselves to forget.

It came time to vote on a certain part of the party platform—an amendment to reinsert language that had intentionally been left out of the party platform by progressives, references to God and no affirmation of Jerusalem as the Capitol of Israel.

Enter Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, at that time Chairman of the 2012 Convention. He is called in because the first voice vote of “ayes” and nays” on the amendment, which requires a two-thirds support to pass, failed utterly. Not sure precisely how you know what two thirds doesn’t sound like, but it was clear at least two thirds opposed the amendment, not supported it. But that imprecise determination was all a slimy, duplicitous scumbag like Villaraigosa needed to manipulate outcome.

He calls for a re-vote. No reason for a re-vote. The previous vote, rejecting the amendment was crystal clear. But that is not the outcome Villaraigosa wanted, not the outcome the DNC had already decided wasn’t in their best interest. Villaraigosa must get the outcome his master’s want, because at that time he was their golden boy henchman, and he had been tasked to get that amendment passed, and he damn sure wasn’t going to let a bunch of progressive minded party members, clearly constituting the floor majority, use their collective votes to thwart DNC policy.

James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. He can be reached at skindiesel@msn.com