So?

I have been equal parts disgusted and saddened by Obama's campaign since approximately mid-autumn last year. The filth he has engaged in is coming back to bite him big time, but it is also a loss that he chose to run this campaign when he could have succeeded even better by being what he claims. However, after this weekend, I am no longer concerned about Obama. He will lose, whether in August or in November, and he will leave.

My party has done something unthinkable for a democrat. They have abrogated people's votes and substituted their own desires as a matter of deliberate party policy to ensure the selection of a particular candidate. This was not a backroom deal. It was the public act of a core committee of the national party.

If a local branch of the party does something like this, everyone understands that it is formally against the standards, rules and procedures of the higher body, just as a locality is subject to oversight from higher state authorities. But when the national party itself shamelessly overturns the very foundation of democratic government itself, then a sea-change has occurred.

The Democratic Party is no longer democratic. It is an oligarchy. While the cynics can argue about how this "has always been the case," I say that this is categorically different than ordinary venality.

It is like Cheney's "So?"

The party has declared, through this one act, that it will do as it pleases, and the rituals of democracy are simply dumb shows to amuse the little people. There is no apology for having done this, just a few incoherent justifications for reorganizing a state's delegation to deliver the desired outcome in August.

So?

Obama is just another greedy politican who will be a footnote in the history books. He wants to be the Deciderer and help his good buddies loot the nations' treasures, and in this he is unremarkable. In contrast, the party has tossed the very foundation of our government overboard.

So?

The Supreme Court prevented votes from being counted. The RBC declared that they did not need votes at all, knowing better than the people what they need.

So?

The institution we rely on to organize and defend our collective interests has replaced that charter with one to promote the personal interests of the ruling faction, nakedly putting their interest to protect the money trough and defend their turf before democracy as such.

So, if the party is willing to trade away the most fundamental political right we have, to select our government and in the doing establish its legitimacy and the grounds of our consent to its exercize of power, how exactly is this different than Dick Cheney's arrogation of power to himself? Where are the limits to this claim to displace the documented public will of the governed in favor of the private advantage of the governors? What rule, save that of tyrants and elites, can be consistent with that foundation? How can the Democrats stand up in public and speak with authority about the rule of law when they engage in the rule of expedience? When a primary season has been marked by violent language towards a competitor and the party does not object, when voters and caucus goers are subjected to intimidation, when "activists" in the blogosphere encourage hunting down opponents' supporters and marauding them in their private lives, when voices of opposition are met with death threats, explain to me how replacing impersonal and objective rules and principles with arbitrary desires defends us from the descent we have observed in the Republicans?

I once wrote about Cheney that his desire was to dissolve all boundaries between institutions of government because it allowed him to freely exercize power as he pleased. What we watched over the weekend is no less than the leadership of the Democratic Party trying on the Cheney doctrine for size.

So?

Anglachel