Logistics

If the DNC has already relocated to Chicago, as reported by the commenter Molly in the Hillary Clinton Forum, then the plan to move was approved months ago.

I've been involved in the merger of two good sized US corporations. It's not something that can be done at the drop of a hat. Costs have to be scoped, budgets established, plans made, landlords current and prospective contacted, vendors hired, bills paid, accounts closed in DC and opened in Chicago, equipment purchased, staff relocated, reassigned and/or terminated, letterhead and business cards printed, signage created, phone service changed, and that's just the stuff off the top of my head.

I'm not buying the claim that it was a recent decision, quickly executed. Who knew about the merger and when did they know it what remains to be unearthed. Not a word of this was out in the blogs or in the news before this week thatI am aware of. How did such a major logistical operation remain under wraps?

This casts the repeated insistence that Florida and Michigan not be allowed to change the outcome in a new light. If the DNC had agreed to relocate, but Obama lost the nomination, that would have made for a lot of explaining as to the DNC itself taking sides. It also makes the silence of top party leaders over the brutal treatment of Hillary by the press more explicable - they needed her to lose in order to give their own machinations some cover.

Over the last few months I have tried to express my concerns for what the Obama campaign is doing to the Democratic Party. While I am a dyed in the wool Hillary supporter, my objections to what Dean, Pelosi, Reid, Kennedy, Obama, et. al., are doing to the party are swiftly growing larger than whether or not Hillary was treated fairly in the campaign or even whether she was cheated out of the nomination. We are talking about a hostile takeover of the party.

Anglachel

Update: I've been getting some comments and emails that indicate people are confused about the DNC move. So am I. That's why I'm taking my time thinking about it. My first alert to it came from Riverdaughter's post on the Confluence, Hmmm, this is not a good way to achieve Unity, which references a Politico post on the matter. I've seen a few oblique references in new reports, and oddly enough a few political cartoons talking about the move. I read blog posts, most of which reference RD's post or the Politico post. What I'm trying to do is consider the behavior of DNC actors over the course of the campaign in light of the news that a merger has occurred.

Not everything has been or will be shut down in Washington - that was part of the Politico post. There is still staff in DC and the national phone number still works. There are probably legal reasons as well as organizational ones to maintain a formal headquarters. Referencing the merger I was part of, the original company was sold to an international firm which was in turn sold to an American industry competitor. There are still offices in the original location and at the international location, all the brand names are intact, most consumers have no clue that a merger took place, but the business is now run from the headquarters of the final purchaser.

My point here is that the political operations have been merged with a specific candidate's campaign (See post Representation) and that this merger cannot have been considered, agreed to and implemented in a single week's time. This is something that requires logistics, not to mention money and legal sign-offs. This points to two key issues: first, the party leaders have been intending to do this for some time (how far back is yet to be established), which casts their behavior towards *all* candidates in an uncertain light; second, it means that they have subsumed the party to the political objectives of a particular person who has been shown through his campaigning to be divisive and antagonistic to a significant portion of the party rank-and-file.

Through my writings going back before this campaign, I have repeatedly discussed the role of independent institutions in both creating power and defending people from the abuses of power. The behavior of the DNC in this electoral cycle indicates to me that it is not maintaining the party as an independent operator, which reduces its power. The antagonism shown to life-long Democratic voters, right up to the latest sneer that women should just get back to their knitting if they don't like what is being done, indicates to be that the DNC is not terribly interested in defending its constituents against abuses of power.

This is what concerns me and frankly it is more important than whether Hillary got the nomination, even as it is inextricable from her attempt to win it. Along with writing about institutions, I have been writing on the long time divide in the party. I think we are watching the Stevensonians trying to purge the Jacksonians. This is categorically different than simply trying to finagle votes while not really delivering the goods, which has been the behavior up until now. It's why I talk about Whole Foods Nation, the fantasy of a purified "Left" that has hobbled the party since Stevenson.