The Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) chairwoman and the party’s left-wing presidential contender are sparring in the media over how welcoming the party should be toward independent voters.
Heading into the Indiana primary on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made the case that all party elections should be held as open contests. Primaries in the Hoosier state and nineteen others allow voters who identify as independents to participate in the Democrats’ nominating process.
Sanders once again finds himself pitted against DNC Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.), who on Monday called for an entirely closed primary system.
“I think Debbie has got it backwards,” he told MSNBC Tuesday morning.
“The world has changed,” the senator said. “More and more people are independents, and I think it makes no sense for the Democrats to say to those people, ‘You can’t help us.'”
He went on to say future electoral success hinges on opening the party up to those who don’t identify with either major political faction.
“For Democrats to do well in a national election they’re going to need a lot of independents, and I would not think it’s a good idea to push those people away.”
Speaking to MSNBC on Monday, Rep. Wasserman-Schultz made the opposite argument.
Stressing that she was giving a personal opinion and not speaking in her capacity as DNC chair, Wasserman-Schultz stated: “I believe that the party’s nominee should be chosen … by members of the party.”
Relations between the Sanders campaign and the DNC have been frosty from the onset. Wasserman-Schultz, co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, was accused of being deferential to the Clinton camp by restricting the number of debates between the candidates.
The fractious relationship almost led the two parties to court after the DNC blocked the Sanders campaign’s access to party voter information. The party had said there were unauthorized breaches of Clinton campaign data by a Sanders’ staffer, who later was fired. Eventually, the DNC restored the Sanders campaign’s access to their files.
According to state-by-state exit polling, Sanders fares better than Clinton among independent-minded voters: a stat that bolstered prior pundit-defying Sanders victories in states with open contests, like Michigan and Wisconsin.
In New York, on the other hand, which had a closed primary, more than 3 million unaffiliated voters were barred from the polls in an election that Clinton won by roughly a quarter-million votes.
Despite a string of losses over the last two weeks, which have mostly shut the door on his chances of winning the Democratic nomination, Sanders is promising to stay in the race, and even fight for the ticket during a contested Democratic convention in July.
A majority of Democrats support the senator’s commitment to stick with it all the way through the primary calendar. An NBC News-Survey Money poll released Tuesday found that 57 percent of Dems believe Sanders should stay in the race.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy