interviews
Addicted to Punishing People of Color
by Jose Saldana
May 27, 2020
This article is part of an ongoing conversation about incarceration in a time of crisis. Jose Saldana, the director of Releasing Aging People in Prison (RAPP) and a close friend to Jalil Muntaqim, presents the case for clemency and early parole during COVID, and poses questions on how to reimagine the current system of incarceration beyond this crisis.
This interview was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | Could you begin by talking about yourself and your experience with RAPP?
Jose Saldana | I am formerly incarcerated. I was released in 2018, after 38 years of incarceration. I met Jalil during those years. I met quite a few other pioneers and mentors and educators, until I became one of the elders.
During the later years while I was battling the New York State Parole Board, I was a social activist. I was involved in prison and sentencing reform, and very focused on parole reform at the time, so I heard about RAPP when it was first being formed. My wife became an early member. RAPP was very instrumental in getting me out of prison because they exposed the most punitive minded commissioners from law enforcement backgrounds that were denying all of us parole. It had become so frustrating, that as soon as people heard a certain commissioner was on the panel, they would postpone their parole hearing. Commissioners who were former cops, parole officers or prosecutors had the lowest release rates, and they were usually from the rural areas of New York. We didn’t have a chance of release with them, but I would still take my chances. I had gone before those commissioners who didn't want to hear anything about rehabilitation, who didn't want to recognize any rehabilitative accomplishments. They focused entirely on the crime that was committed decades ago, and that's all they would want to talk about. RAPP exposed these commissioners for their racism and bigotry and unfairness.
What years is this?
It was in June 2017, the Governor didn't reappoint those commissioners, that was a huge win for us. When we heard that news, everybody was celebrating. Not that they weren't still bad commissioners on the parole board, but the worst were gone. And when we heard that he had appointed a diversified group, we started to try and get some background information on who these new commissioners were. RAPP sent me a small biography on all of them, and I looked at it and I said, "Man, this looks very good, this looks promising." Ironically, one of the comissioners I was looking at ended up being the lead commissioner that heard my case in November, 2017. She asked me one question about the crime I committed in 1979. Then said, “Now, let's talk about what you have been doing the last 38-years of your life.” Based on the overwhelming evidence of rehabilitation before her, she granted me parole.
And what was her background?
She was a social worker. Which is what we were asking for, for people who could really embrace the concept of transformation.
I was released several months later, and that's when I reported to duty at RAPP. I had an obligation. I had an obligation to help RAPP in their mission, and I had an obligation to the men I was leaving behind. Elders, and mentors, some of whom had tragically passed away over the years. Jalil was one of the men I was leaving behind. He had more time than me, and he was well deserving of walking out with me. So that is how I became involved with this type of work and it has become my life's mission.
How do you define the mission of RAPP?
Right now we're focused on an immediate solution to the COVID crisis that is impacting people in prison, especially those who are elderly and those with underlying health conditions. The immediate solution is for the Governor to issue mass clemency, and for the New York State Parole Board to advance parole hearings so that men and women can get out ahead of their scheduled parole time. They should be released up to two years in advance of their scheduled time, because they might not have two years to live. And those who have already been granted the parole, should have expedited release.
Our original focus was, of course, legislative action – passing bills that would transform the legal system. But that's time consuming, and men and women in prison do not have that time. They may not have weeks right now. We can’t let the bureaucratic red tape delay people. A 60 year old man was granted parole but died before he was released. We can't afford to have people waiting two and a half, three months to get out of prison once they have been granted release. He had a stable home. He had people who had already committed to housing him. Grant these people release right away, and have housing for those who don't have a family.
Those are the two issues that we're really pushing for, mass clemency and expedited parole, even though neither the Governor nor the Department of Corrections has been very receptive. The Department of Corrections has denied our petitions to grant some of these elderly people medical parole during he COVID crisis.
And medical parole is completely separate from advanced parole or changing sentences, it’s an exceptional request because it's an exceptional time, correct?
Yes, according to the New York State laws, medical parole is for people who are ill. You don't necessarily have to be terminally ill, but it doesn't cover future illness, which is how they are denying these applications.
They are saying COVID-19 is not covered in the medical parole law, and they encourage us to take the clemency route. But we are not getting anywhere with clemency, so, in effect, they are just letting people die.
In Jalil's case, Annucci, The Commissioner of Parole, could have released Jalil when he was granted a writ of habeas corpus for temporary emergency medical release; Jalil is 68 years old with an underlying condition. Instead, Annucci chose to fight it, and appeal it, and during that process is when Jalil gets infected.
And now he's currently hospitalized with Coronavirus.
Right. And Annucci is still fighting tooth and nail to keep him in prison.
Tomorrow they go back to court to see if the first ruling will be upheld or not.
And you better believe that even if the Appellate Court agrees with the Lower Court, Annucci will try to put it through the Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state.
Which is just adding more time to a situation that really doesn't have that luxury. Jalil's case is especially unique because of the political component, which may overshadow the request. What does the case mean politically? Instead of viewing this as a momentary request separate from being granted parole in general.
Exactly right. And the political problem is intensifying. We allow the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) who, in effect, make law in New York state. They are saying that no cop killer should ever get out of prison. That's not the law, but they're trying to say that that's the law. It is a problem from Governor Cuomo on down. The commissioner who released Herman Bell, the man who was convicted with Jalil, said she couldn't handle the pushback she got for letting him go, and she retired in two years.
The more diversified parole board was created under Cuomo, intentionally adding rehabilitation allies, yet there was still negative pushback from him about Herman Bell.
He was really forced by the activists to appoint new commissioners. He couldn't deny the racism, the bigotry, and the unfairness that was evident from parole hearing transcripts. He just couldn't deny it. I just think he made a wise decision in not having these commissioners reappointed, but it is not that he was too concerned, he was just exposed.
He even denounced the decision to let Herman Bell go. This is an independent body. He has no business trying to influence it, but because the PBA was denouncing it, Cuomo went right along and sang the same song.
The PBA still has massive influence over New York state politics.
Of course. And it's not just that they are against releasing people convicted of harming police officers – they want to control the decision making process in New York state. They want to control what happens to anybody convicted of a violent crime.
At the moment there is no prioritization given to vulnerable incarcerated populations – especially the elderly who you focus on through RAPP.
This is what all public health experts are saying: the elderly are vulnerable to COVID-19. Those with underlying health conditions are vulnerable to COVID-19. This is not something we made up, it is what the experts are saying. So if you have a 60, 70 year old man languishing in prison with 10 more years to go, COVID-19 is a death sentence for that man for the most part. Some people may survive, but in prison the chances are very slim.
There's a gentleman named Benjamin Smalls, who was like a mentor to me. He was 72 years old. He was infected with COVID-19 a month ago, and just passed away less than a month ago. I was also infected with COVID-19 a month ago. So we were both battling this virus at the very same time. I was fortunate to have exceptional, 24 hours around the clock healthcare, to the point when it became annoying. I'd be woken up three or four times during the night to get my vitals checked.
I attribute the health care I received to my survival. He did not have access to that same level of care.
While I was being released from the hospital, recovered, he passed away. That goes to show the difference in good care. Not that he would have been guaranteed to survive had he been released, but he would've had a better chance out here.I know the substandard healthcare that we get in prison. It's a crisis that we have faced for decades. This is nothing new. Healthcare, especially as you get older, is always an issue in prison. Jalil's best chance would have been to be released when they first granted him release, before he was infected.
This is also not the first public health crisis that has affected people in prison. You were still serving time during the AIDS crisis and a Hep-C breakout. What was it like while you were incarcerated?
The Department of Corrections is never prepared for a health crisis. They have one solution to health crises, and that's punishment.
Everything they do is based on a paradigm of punishment that dominates their thinking. During the HIV/AIDS crisis, they put gay people in solitary confinement, thinking they were automatically a danger. Without any testing, without any medical foundation for their position, they would just give them punishment. Those who were ill, even if they weren't tested for HIV, because that came later on, were put in isolation. They were totally isolated from the population as punishment. Not as a preventive measure, but as punishment.
And they haven't learned from this. During the Hep-C crisis, they did the same. They deprived people of treatment. People would actually go to court in order to get treatment for Hepatitis C. With the Tuberculosis outbreak, they would just take people and punish them with the most punitive measures. The crisis with COVID-19 is the same thing. People in prison that I have been speaking to have been saying that they are afraid to say that they are not feeling well because they'll be put in isolation, as punishment. That is their only solution to this.
The first thing Governor Cuomo did to address the pandemic crisis that was going to hit the New York State prisons was to have incarcerated people make hand-sanitizer, sanitizer that they would not have access to because it has alcohol in it. And he paraded himself as doing something extraordinary, using prison labor.
He also suspended all visits, effectively targeting our communities, our families as the only carriers of this virus. Yet, every day three-shifts of correction staff was entering and leaving the prisons. He did not test the correctional officers, his employees, and they were the ones who ended up bringing the virus into prisons. Even when hundreds of correctional officers tested positive, Cuomo would not do more testing. He would not order that every single correction officer get tested before they enter the prison. Now, over a thousand of them have tested positive. The union had to fight for them to get mass testing. And then the incarcerated had to fight for mass testing, which they are still not getting.
Every commonplace preventive measure that is now in prisons was won by activists fighting for those who are incarcerated and their families. We had to fight for everything. He has shown that he's not concerned. He makes himself out to be presidential, making warlike preparations for all New Yorkers, building hospitals in parks, which is great, but has ignored the plight of men and women incarcerated and facing the same fatal virus. Their families live in those black and brown communities that have been disproportionately impacted by this virus. Not one single plan of action to address why black and brown people have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Correct the root causes or we will again do the dying in the next pandemic. There is no plan, and that shows me that we as people really don't matter to him.
The basis of Jalil’s first release request was preventative. Now that he’s already been infected and hospitalized with COVID-19, is there a chance they argue the foundation of Jalil’s argument is gone?
Well no one can say whether he's going to be re-infected. You know, his cause still has the same solution. He will get better treatment if he is released from prison. And not only that, it sets the precedent that the men and women who are elderly, who are the most vulnerable to this disease, who have underlying health conditions, should be entitled to this relief. It sends a very rational and humane precedent for people who were incarcerated.
If this is a victory, it will be a victory for all of us.
I think that new directives will be established in the Department of Corrections. I think they will now have to consider COVID-19 as a criteria for medical parole. There's so many good things that can come from this. I think that the governor will be forced to give more clemencies to the elderly, even those who have been convicted for violent crimes.
Do you feel optimistic that will happen?
I have to be optimistic now. When this approach was first discussed with me I didn't see a win here. Obviously I was wrong. But I think that this is a compelling argument. It's an 8th amendment argument – that we should be free from cruel and unusual punishment. This case should be used as precedent so that the Department of Corrections no longer has a choice in whether they should let somebody die in prison or at the mercy of substandard health care.
Jalil is in Albany Medical Center Hospital, and that is a better hospital. I've been there before. I went for a colonoscopy and the correction officers and sergeants who took me there refused to leave the room. They told the doctors and nurses that I had to be visible at all times. We are treated differently, and that leaves an impression on the doctors and nurses that we must be dangerous. You can just imagine what they're doing in Jalil’s case. So although he's in an outside hospital, it's still not going to be the same standard of care. And they are going to do everything humanly possible to rush him back to prison.
He's not going to get the care that I got. He just isn't. And that could mean the difference between life and death.
Do you think Jalil’s visibility affects his legal outcomes?
Well listen, they did not give up with the Herman Bell case. They kept appealing and appealing until they could go no further. The PBA, is the most powerful union in the country and they influence political leaders in New York State. They don’t care about Jalil’s transformation or that he has helped a generation of younger incarcerated men transform their lives. They promote the racist concept that a police officer’s live has greater value than all other lives, and those that are convicted of the murder of a police officer should died in prison.
How have the incarceration debates changed over time? How has public and political opinion changed?
I think we have changed opinions within our community and with our legislators.
Initially, because the influence of the PBA, the murder of police officers was considered to be a totally different category of a crime. Our elder parole bill doesn't exclude anybody based on their crime of conviction or the length of their sentence. We don't believe in excluding people from justice. When we advocated for that bill, the first thing legislatures said is that though they liked the bill, they couldn’t get behind letting cop killers go free.
We debated those issues with legislatures. I tell them, “Listen, where you come from, your community has a different relationship with police officers than the communities I come from. They don't kill people in your community. They kill people in our community. So we don't value their lives any greater than we value another person's life - a housewife, a teacher, a priest, a nurse. All their lives are equal to us. Their lives have no greater value to us. If anything we are justified in saying they're lives have less value, because they treat our lives like they have less value. And this is our history of the relationships that we have with law enforcement. It goes back generations. You don't have the experience to say that their lives have greater value."
A lot of these white Democrats started saying, “You know that's true, I never thought about it that way.” We were able to change perception amongst our legislators.
We have also changed the perception in our community. Our community has been harmed by interpersonal violence, andour immediate response is to say, "Lock them up and don't let them come out anymore." But we've had discussion in our communities, saying, well let's talk about punishment. Let's talk about justice. Who defines justice? Really, who? Does someone define it for us? Well, why don't we try to define it for ourselves. What is justice? What is criminal justice? And we have this conversation – even in regard to sex offenders, because sex offendersarent excluded from our parole bill either. And the reason why being, this is what we tell our community – we as people have been excluded from everything. They have tried to exclude us from the human race. Not talking about voting rights. Not talking about equal protection, not talking about equal rights under the law. Not talking about equal opportunity for education, and employment. We've been excluded from everything, and we've had to fight for everything. Who are we to exclude other people from justice? Really. Who are we to do that? That's why we don't exclude anybody, because we believe that everybody can transform their lives. I'm a living example. People would say, "This guy will never be nothing." No, give them the opportunity, and most people can transform their lives. So in having deeply rooted conversations with our community, and with our legislators, we've been able to change perspective.
You have to have very difficult debates and conversations with yourself about what justice means, and we need to be having them publicly. Arguably, the relationship between police and black bodies has never been more visible. Look at what came out yesterday. This is not anecdotal. What do you want the conversation to look like and how honest do you think it has to be to move the political element of this forward?
I think people have to recognize that mass incarceration is not a myth. It exists. Communities of color have been targeted. And as a result, people of color were given more time, and little opportunity to get out – and in between they were getting old, and dying in prison. How do we correct that? And what's the reason for correcting? The parole commissioner who released me said that in her opinion, New York, as well as other states, are addicted to punishing people of color. And thats rooted in slavery. Addicted to punishing people of color. We have to really understand the underlying racism behind all of this.
We have to transform the criminal legal system into a system that is not focused on punishment. In my readings, the indigenous didn't have prisons. Of course today is a different civilization. But we don't have to do this, this is not the only way. Just like, when I was growing up, my parents used to beat me. That's all they knew. But now in society, everyone recognizes that that is not the only way to discipline kids. In fact, that is not the way.
We have to have this conversation. What is the value of prisons? Really. What do prisons really do?
I spent damn near four decades in prison, and I can tell you that there's no such thing as a good prison. Prisons do not rehabilitate at all. All they do is destroy, dehumanize, degrade.
There is no good in prisons, no matter how it may look from the outside.That's not a necessity in our society. Now that's a hard conversation because of the interpersonal violence that is prevalent in our community, but we really don't have to address crimes in this manner. It's definitely not the first solution, it can never be the first solution.
Do you feel like we're capable of having that conversation?
That's a difficult question. We are still in the very early stages of trying to introduce the conversation. But you know, yes. I do a lot of speaking at campuses, at just about every major university in New York, and all the students that I've talked to claim to be abolitionists. That has to give me some sense of optimism. These are people who are going into the legal profession, claiming abolitionist status. I’m like, “Yes. That's great. Let's keep it up.” So, even when you think things will never get better, you can see areas where they are obviously getting better.
I think what convinces people that rehabilitation is possible is an example. I'm an example, and there are others like me. We were all in prison together, we all did decades. We are the original credible messengers. We are the first ones that went out to the so-called worst neighborhoods in our communities, and have been able to reach these kids that have been neglected and abandoned. If that defines our value, then that defines the value of everyone else who is also incarcerated. And there's no denying this. The Commissioner of DOCCS testified during the Senate Budget Hearing this year, “that the best credible messengers are the old timers who have spent decades in prison.” At least he got that right.
Once we are released, if there's nothing else we can do, we can do that. A lot of us choose to do just that. I have an old friend of mine who was born and raised in Brownsville and he has now created a program that dramatically reduces violence in Brownsville. If many incarcerated people are coming out of prison and come out with ideas and solutions that are working, then we need more of them to be released from prison, not die in prison.
I'm pretty visible in New York to the men that I left behind. And when they see me or hear me speaking on the radio stations that they listened to, it inspires them. It affirms that they have a place in this society, and that they definitely have a place in their community. And that's all a person who had no vision of a future needs to have to have the ability to envision an alternate future for themselves. It’s huge.
interviews
The Democratic Party & The DNC
by Elaine Kamarck
March 15, 2020
This interview with Elaine C. Kamarck, a Senior Fellow in the Governance Studies program as well as the Director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
She is an expert on American electoral politics and government innovation and reform in the United States, OECD nations, and developing countries. She focuses her research on the presidential nomination system and American politics and has worked in many American presidential campaigns. Kamarck is the author of “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates” and “Why Presidents Fail And How They Can Succeed Again.”
She started at the Kennedy School in 1997 after a career in politics and government. She has been a member of the Democratic National Committee and the DNC’s Rules Committee since 1997. She has participated actively in four presidential campaigns and in ten nominating conventions—including two Republican conventions—and has served as a superdelegate to five Democratic conventions. In the 1980s, she was one of the founders of the New Democrat movement that helped elect Bill Clinton president. She served in the White House from 1993 to 1997, where she created and managed the Clinton Administration's National Performance Review, also known as the “reinventing government initiative.”
frank | How are you today Elaine?
Elaine Kamarck | Just fine. Thanks. How about you?
I'm doing well, thank you. We pre-discussed a bit, but we're looking at the history of the two primary parties in the US, and I want to talk about the transitions in party ideology since you've been active in working within the democratic party. What is your history with the party?
I went to work out of graduate school for the Democratic National Committee many, many years ago as the research director for a commission that was writing a rule for the 1980 Democratic convention. I worked for the DNC for many years. I worked in presidential politics for many years.
I finally finished my doctoral dissertation and went to work for a Think Tank. Again, a democratic leaning think tank. And then Bill Clinton won the presidency. I went into the White House and worked for him. When I left there, I went up to Harvard where I stayed for 15 years being a professor.
And then I came down here to Brookings where I write about politics and public policy and government.
You obviously have a very close look at the Democratic Party both through the DNC and the White House. Can you see a change in the party? Have things shifted, or has there been a consistent line of ideas and ideals?
It's probably more consistent than people realize. Let's take healthcare, which is one of the big issues. The Democratic Party first called for universal healthcare in 1948 in it's platform. So, that's been around for a long, long time. The Democratic Party's been quite consistent in terms of supporting laws that allow for union organizing. That's been decades and decades. The party has changed a little bit. There's many issues the party's been quite consistent on. The party has been pro choice for many years. On all the big ones, there's actually great stability in the party itself, and there's been some stability between the parties.
Now, there are issues where there's been changes.
And that frankly happened to the Republican party as well, but more dramatically. They were very much a free trade party. And now under Trump they very much are not.
Obviously, the foreign policy issues change. Nuclear treaties with the old Soviet Union were a big issue in the 1984 presidential election. We don't talk about them as much anymore even though, frankly, they're still important. There's a lot of continuity within the parties and between the parties over the years, more than people think when they're looking at the issues in the heat of the moment.
Could you talk about the Clinton administration's position on trade and how that transitioned to what we're seeing now from democratic candidates currently running for president?
During the Clinton administration there were several big trade treaties passed and put into effect. The first one, of course, NAFTA. China MFN was also a big one opening up trade to China. The Clinton administration had a lot of free trade policies. And at the time it was thought that if you passed a trade treaty, you would have some dislocation, but that if you also passed it with trade adjustment assistance to retrain people, etc. that it would work.
You wouldn't be hurting anybody. There would be the normal disruptions in an economy. A lot of people in the Clinton administration, myself included, now think that trade adjustment assistance didn't do the job. There were field workers who had no interest in becoming X-ray technicians, for instance. It's a good example because heavy manufacturing has decreased, but of course, a lot of good jobs have increased over this period of time in healthcare. But there were a lot of people, men especially, who didn't want to work in healthcare, and didn't want to make those sorts of transitions, or couldn't make those transitions for whatever reason.
People who were stuck in their homes and had mortgages, and couldn't move, and couldn't sell their houses once manufacturing picked up and moved to China or Indonesia or somewhere else. I think that in the Clinton administration, we underestimated the difficulty of these economic transitions. That's why a couple years ago Bill Clinton came here to Brookings and gave a speech, he said, "I couldn't pass a trade bill today."
Is the transition away from this trade policy because of the unintended consequences, or has the principle shifted?
I think it's more general than that. Too many people, in too many communities, have been hurt by globalization and therefore the rush to do new trade agreements is in fact very, very much slowed down. Trump did a renegotiation of NAFTA, which passed, which made some changes.
It’s frankly not as dramatic as, of course, he would have us believe. We still have trade architecture we had 20 years ago. It's just that so many people are suspicious of trade deals now, that you can't see any new ones happening in the near future.
You mentioned universal healthcare has been at the forefront of Dem policy since 1948. There is still this big, very contentious debate about healthcare. Has the conversation actually shifted or is it repetitive?
No. The conversation has actually shifted. The conversation, up until about 2017 was, "How do we take this system we have of private health insurance, where most people have private health insurance, and old people and poor people have public health insurance, how do we standardize that and control costs and make sure that no one is left behind?"
What happened is the idea of single payer, which is obviously the system in most other democratic countries, got great popularity with this notion of Medicare for All. But, as I'm fond of saying to my students, there's this really weird technical term called transition cost, and it is the killer of revolutions and it's a killer of big ideas, particularly in stable democracies. And the transition costs refer to the dollar cost and the upheaval cost in moving from one large system to a completely different large system.
You have immediately hundreds of thousands of people out of work. You have chaos. You have people who don't know what their new plan is going to look like. You have to set up an entirely new system before that happens.
It's a jarring jolt to the economy and to people's lives, which is why by the way, it is losing popularity for people. Think about it. On the other hand, if you put in a public option into Obamacare, what will happen is that eventually private health insurers will either go out of business or they'll have to get competitive with a public system.
Eventually, we will have a public system because frankly, one of the things the government turns out to be very good at is paying bills. Paying bills for your doctors, for the old people's doctors in Medicare. If you notice, with the exception of Warren and Sanders, all the other democratic candidates got behind this idea of a public option, because in the public option people can keep their private health insurance and then as this new system gets working, they can say, "Oh, okay. It's pretty good after all, and it's cheaper."
That might be cheaper than your private health insurance. And you will transition in a much more gradual way, and one that lets people have choice and people feel that they have choice. That's kind of the debate. It's sort of a sudden shift, to a more gradual shift.
You described the transition cost as the killer of revolution and of big ideas in stable democracies, and Sanders’ plan as this serious jolt to the economy. Are there examples of massive transitions to new systems that worked, or that were inevitable?
We had a big transition to a big system in 1936 when Roosevelt started the social security system, and that's an interesting example of how these things do cause jolts. In 1935 and '36 the United States was actually coming out of the Great Depression. Jobs were picking up, etc. And then, two things happened in 1936 / 37. Payroll deductions started coming out of people's income to fund this new social security system. That was the first year it was ever done. And the federal reserve board made a pull back on the money supply. That wasn't related to this. That was just inexperience with Keynesian economics. But those two things at once put the United States back into the Great Depression.
There was a double dip. The first Great Depression, it started to alleviate, and then, there was another big one. And we didn't come out of the second dip until we started work production for the Second World War.
When you start a big new system like this, it shakes the economy. There's all sorts of things falling out from those decisions, which is why now with a bigger and more robust social safety net, and some better knowledge of how macroeconomics works, every time you look at one of these great big ideas, you've got to ask yourself, "What's going to happen? What are the transition costs going to be from getting from one system to another? And can we afford to alleviate them so that people aren't hurt in the transition?"
Obviously, social security still exists and is something a lot of people would argue was necessary. The double dip might have been necessary. Short term pain, long term support and security.
Right, right.
Is that a fair argument to make now?
Is there a better way to get to universal healthcare?" And that, of course, is the appeal of the public option. Is that it is less disruptive than putting in place something called Medicare for All, and then suddenly having private health insurance prohibited.
If there's a less painful option or an option where the true transition costs are easier, obviously that's the prudent thing to do.
I want to talk about the DNC and the role of the DNC in democratic politics. Can you explain at a basic level what the function of the DNC is?
Policy positions are established by presidential candidates. The winning candidate writes the platform. Policy is established by incumbent presidents in terms of what they do. And it's established by the democratic caucus in the house and the democratic caucus in the Senate. They're the ones that set policy on these very big questions. The DNC has two functions. One is to elect Democrats all the way up and down the ballot. Tom Perez, the current chairman of the DNC, can brag justifiably about all the state democratic legislative seats that have been won since 2016, 2017 when he took over. That's their first goal, is winning elections and gathering up enough money, and then distributing that money in ways that help win elections. There's a lot of evidence that the DNC was very, very helpful in winning back a bunch of gubernatorial seats in 2018, and a bunch of state legislative seats.
The second thing the DNC does is it has the responsibility for setting the rules for the presidential nomination system. These rules for this coming year were set in a meeting in Chicago in 2018. Before we had a full slate of candidates. The DNC is the arbiter of those rules. They set up the rules of the road for the convention. And then of course, they have to put on the convention. That's a massive logistical operation as you can imagine. And that's the responsibility of the DNC.
Finally, once there is the presidential candidate, the DNC tries to raise as much money as they possibly can and use it in key states for get-out-the vote efforts for all the Democratic office holders, from president down to County commissioner.
What do the 2020 guidelines look like? The lingering thing right now within democratic politics is this idea of neither front runner getting enough delegates. What happens then?
The rules that the party passes for delegate selection, it governs things like when states can have their primary. The rules set out the first four early states, that we saw happen. And then, after that states can do what they want to do in terms of the date of their primary.
It sets rules for awarding delegates. You've probably heard of the 15% rule, where a candidate has to get more than 15% of the vote in order to be awarded any delegates. It sets out how you select your at large delegates, whether or not you're going to have superdelegates, whether they are voting on the first ballot or the second ballot only, which is the rule for 2020. They set out the rules of the road.
The second piece that the party passes is the call to the convention. And the call to the convention sets out the rules for the actual convention, what happens when you get there. The current rule, and it has been the rule for many, many, many years, is that you have to have a majority of the delegates when you arrive at the convention, or you have to have a majority of delegates on the first ballot in order to be nominated.
If you wanted to change that, you would have to go through the Rules Committee and have a minority report and get a vote to change the rules, which has happened. It's possible to do. But look at it this way, if you come into the convention with a plurality and you want to change the rule to a majority, but you only have a plurality, you're probably going to lose that fight. Both parties have used majority for many, many years. When Franklin Roosevelt got nominated you had to get a two thirds vote.
The person with the majority of the delegate vote carries the nomination.
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
There was a debate question at the end of the last debate that asked all of the candidates on stage, "If we get to the DNC in July and no one has a clear majority of delegates, how would you proceed?" Everybody except for Sanders said, “you let the system work it out.” Sanders said it should go to the person with the most votes.
Maybe Sanders was talking about the rules. But I think what he was probably referring to is that if the primaries in June he has the plurality, he would encourage other people to join him. In other words, to leave their candidates and support him instead because he would have momentum, he would have a certain claim on having won the most votes, and therefore he should get the nomination.
I think that's more what he was talking about than an actual change in the game. Remember that there's this period from the first week in June to the opening of the convention on July, 13th where if no one has the magic number, there will be a lot of persuasion going on. There'll be a lot of phone calls and meetings with delegates for other candidates, trying to get them to come over and make a majority. I would assume that if somebody has a plurality and it's a pretty hefty one, they probably would end up getting the nomination by the time we go into the convention.
The DNC in the last few years has gotten a lot of criticism about their role in democratic politics. And I think the criticism stems from where they [DNC] align within this split in the party – between moderate and progressive candidates. Do you feel like that criticism is fair?
Well, there's two ways to answer that. If you work for a political party, whether it's the Democratic or Republican party, your primary interest is not factional. It is not aligned for this group or that group. Your primary interest is, how do we win? And in that situation, you find a lot of people at the DNC looking at things through the lens of, "What is the best way for us to win?" as opposed to any sort of ideology. The second thing I'd say about that is that the DNC controls very little of what it takes to win.
The DNC does not give candidates in primaries money, all right? It didn't give Hillary Clinton any money. It hasn't given anybody in the current race any money. It doesn't do endorsements in primaries. It simply sets the rules of the game and it doesn't change the rules of the game.
The rules of the game for 2016 were set in 2014 before Senator Sanders ever got into the race. They were not changed between 2014 and 2016. Similarly, the rules for this year were set in 2018. They were not changed between 2018 and 2020. So while individuals, as we saw in the WikiLeaks releases from 2016, at the DNC may have their own preferences, there's very little the party can actually do to influence a nomination race. All you have to do is look at the Republicans in 2016. Believe me, if you think that those couple emails from WikiLeaks criticizing Senator Sanders were bad, imagine what the RNC staffers were saying about Donald Trump in 2015. Okay.
Expect it was awful. And in fact, even though there was great deal of consternation among the Republican party regulars about the Trump candidacy, they were in the end, helpless to stop his candidacy because the power in the nomination system is all now in the hands of primary voters.
And that's a good thing to you?
Well, I'm not sure it's a good thing actually. I'm not sure it's a good thing because in fact it gives you people like Donald Trump, who are authoritarians and demagogues, and clearly not suited to be president. He's a dangerous person to democracy. That's my own point of view.
I'm worried frankly, about this primary system, which by the way works the same in both parties. I've had this conversation with my Democratic friends so often who say, "Oh, we would never have nominated Donald Trump." What? How do you know? We could, because the system is the same where basically all the allocations of delegates fall to the primary voters. We could as easily have a Democratic demagogue as we do currently a Republican demagogue, and they could get elected.
When did the rules give primary voters the majority power in electing the candidate?
It was after 1968 and it was somewhat of a gradual process. And for most of the history after 1968, the primary voters basically chose the same sorts of candidates that the old fashioned party bosses and elected officials would have chosen. 2016 was the first time we saw somebody who would never have been chosen by a Republican office holder.
We had Donald Trump elected. Forget these policies, right? A lot of people think he and the way he thinks, and the way he is trying to undermine the judiciary and other parts of the government, is a danger to democracy.
Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, nobody thinks that on that dimension they would've been Donald Trump's.
They were very critical during the election, and then transitioned to support. Does that support of President Trump from people within the party, the acceptance of a new type of president, who does undermine Democratic norms, make you nervous about who can and will be elected in the future?
Oh, absolutely.
On the other hand, I will say that under the surface, the Republican Senate, as much as it is publicly in lapdog mode, has in fact done some things to keep Donald Trump from his worst instincts. They did pass the Russian sanctions bill early on. They have passed restrictions on Trump's behavior in Yemen and in Iran. They reigned him in a little bit, but certainly not as much as we would like to see. Trump's most recent attacks on the judiciary are just downright terrifying given that for over 200 years we've had a system of equality between the branches of government.
Does it worry you about what could happen on the Democratic side as well? Does this attraction to the cult of personality make you nervous? Can you even return to “norms” after a President Trump?
It makes me nervous for both sides. The same dynamics that gave us Trump could easily give us a Democratic version of Trump at some point in the future. I can't tell yet. There's other people who study the presidency as I do, and we've all had the following conversation.
We don't know how much of this executive overreach goes away with Donald Trump whenever he leaves office, and how much of this will permanently change the office of the presidency. I think it's a little bit hard to say at this point.
Trump, unlike some other would-be dictators around the world, like Erdoğan in Turkey or like the president of Hungary, Trump has not managed to change any laws to give him more power, but he has managed to exercise presidential powers in ways that are pretty unprecedented.
It's a little bit tough to say at this point. I think we can say that there's probably no permanent damage done, but there certainly has been damage done to our expectations of how a president should behave.
I'm so curious about, even if he is beat in November, what he means for future presidencies.
Absolutely.
Once things change it's hard to go back. Maybe it just pivots into a different direction, but it's fascinating to me.
As it should be.