It turns out that Donald Trump's campaign may fall apart because he's a political novice, hired bad consultants, and doesn't know how the caucus and delegate systems work.
Trump will whine that this is unfair, that it's insider politics conducted in smoke-filled rooms. Hey, Donny boy: politics ain't bean bag.
But it raises a bigger question: who controls a political party? The voters who show up at the polls? The elected officials who serve? Or the political operatives and "hacks" who invest their time, sweat and tears, spending thousands of hours a year, year in and year out, working to advance the party and its members? This last group makes up a lot of the delegates who go to conventions. They care about more than just one presidential race.
After contributing zero time, money or effort to Republicans for sixty-eight years, Donald Trump decided that he could stage a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. Understandably, Republican party operatives who have dedicated their entire lives to the party want nothing to do with Trump.
It's not just because his ideas are stupid, he's a selfish boor, he's insulted party icons, he's ripped the bandaid of Republican lies off the Iraq war, and he's reinforced the idea that Republicans are racist, women-hating dicks.
No, a huge part of it is that Trump hasn't paid his dues, put in the time, or supported Republican candidates in any serious manner. Unlike Romney, who contributed millions to local Republican office holders in the 2012 cycle, Trump has done nothing for other Republicans, focusing solely on himself (big surprise).
Donald Trump is a New York carpetbagger come to steal the Republican Party away from the people who built it.
Bernie Sanders is doing the same thing: he's not a Democrat, he just plays one in the Senate. Unlike Clinton, who has helped raise millions of dollars for Democrats on the local, state and national levels, Sanders has done absolutely nothing to help Democrats.
And without electing several dozen more Democrats to the House and Senate, Sanders would be completely incapable of accomplishing any of his grandiose goals if he were elected. If the composition of the House and Senate remain unchanged, Sanders would be a lame duck president for his entire term.
The Bernie Bros and Trumpists want to destroy the party establishments and get rid of the deadwood "insiders." But someone has to do all the work: raise campaign cash, coddle donors, recruit new candidates to run for office so that voters have someone to vote for, organize caucuses and primaries so that people can actually vote, and keep the lights on. Without insiders political parties collapse.
A lot of people who voted for Obama are angry that he didn't accomplish everything he set out to do. Many are Sanders supporters now. But the reason Obama's momentum collapsed was that Ted Kennedy died, leaving Obama vulnerable to never-ending Republican filibusters in the Senate. Then those people didn't show up at the polls in 2010 and 2014 to elect Democrats.
That allowed Republicans to gain control of the Senate and the House, and a lot of statehouses, which allowed them to control redistricting and impose hundreds of new restrictions on voting across the country to suppress Democratic turnout. Republicans in Congress decided they would just run out the clock on Obama's term, and block everything they could.
Voters can't just show up every four years and expect to get what they want. They need to vote in every primary and general election, without fail. That's why cranky old white men run everything -- they volunteer for the grunt work of running the party and they get their peeps to show up to vote in every damned election, no matter how "insignificant."
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