Okay, I have been aware since the controversial election of Tom Perez as chair of the DNC that he was no friend of the left or reform. He overturned the ban on the party taking donations from the coal, oil and gas industry. When he ascended the throne he purged every progressive voice he could find from the ranks of the delegates and party leadership positions, ousting anyone who had supported the actual leftie Keith Ellison over him in the chair race, replacing them with lobbyists.
https://theweek.com/articles/790183/treachery-tom-perez
He has meddled in local primary races that he technically shouldn't take sides to undermine grassroots efforts like Cynthia Nixon by endorsing and stumping for corporate candidates like Andrew Cuomo who give tax breaks to the rich at the expense of our schools.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/24/tom-perez-andrew-cuomo-primary-endorsements-607799
For the presidential debates his DNC has used arbitrary polling thresholds, and cherry picked which polls qualify and which don't, usually to the detriment of an outsider trying to get in like Tulsi Gabbard or Andrew Yang, just before changing the rules all over again so that a billionaire who will continue to enable the status quo like Mike Bloomberg can buy their way onto the stage, when others have fallen away, or never even got a chance like Wayne Messam or Mike Gravel.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/31/dnc-shifts-debate-requirements-opening-door-for-bloomberg-110017
We've seen nothing yet though...
The committee that Perez appointed to 2020 National Convention is an illustration of how many donors still control the party. I had heard some rumblings about this from The Hill earlier this week, and knew the comittee wasn't going to be good. For starters John Podesta was on the rules committee-- the incompetent Hillary 2016 campaign manager whose leaked correspondences embarrassed them with dirty laundry like the campaign getting debate questions in advance, the Goldman Sachs conferences, covert ops in Syria, the Clinton foundation taking money from Keystone XL pipeline backers. Well he's the one involved.
What I didn't realize though was how deep the cronyism went. Almost everyone Perez named to the policy and rules committee has ties to the military industrial complex, healthcare insurance companies, banks lobbying groups, hedge funds, the fossil fuel industry, the list goes on and on from Goldman Sachs to Duke Energy to AIPAC to Boeing to Blue Cross Blue Shield to Wal-Mart.
https://www.rootsaction.org/news-a-views/2189-tom-perez-stacks-2020-convention-committees-with-from-the-swamp-nominations
I have tried to be optimistic and work within the Democratic party when possible, but this sure is depressing going forward. These insiders are going to obstruct progressive candidates and policies at every opportunity, and that's why they were chosen by Perez. Several appointees like CNN's Maria Cardona have written columns attacking the economic policies of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders with all the alarmist Venezuela rhetoric you would expect of a Republican, or Barney Frank from the board of directors on New York Signature Bank who have spent years fighting the progressive wing like Alessandria Ocasio Cortez and Sanders over policies like environmental protections and expanding healthcare to everyone.
These are individuals with a history of selling regime change war, pushing for trade policies to ship jobs overseas, arguing against raising the minimum wage, blocking medicare for all, supporting fracking and protecting banks. They have been given power to determine what the domestic and foreign policy for the party will be going forward, and interpret the rules of this primary, and it is not going to be in a way that will favor regular people I can garuntee.
Many of them literally worked for Kamala Harris, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Madeline Albright, Joe Biden, John Kerry, John McCain, Ronald Reagan, Joe Libermann, Barack Obama and Mike Bloomberg, as advisers, bundlers in their super pacs, running their campaigns and more.
This is not what we need. We will lose to Trump again if we take this step backward in 2020.