The Democratic Party needs to chill out

Man, American elections are just preposterously long, aren't they? The primaries have already been going for well over a year, and we have nearly a month to go before the final vote is done. Unsurprisingly, the drawn-out tension is starting to get to some people. In Nevada, a fight over procedure during the Democratic state convention boiled over into real nastiness, as a few disgrunted Bernie Sanders supporters deluged the convention chair with awful calls and text messages.

It's difficult to parse the competing claims. Naturally, Hillary Clinton's supporters insist that Sanders is to blame for everything, while Sanders supporters say the opposite. But at the risk of sounding like the late David Broder, both sides need to take a few deep breaths and chill out.

I've read competing accounts from Clinton partisans and Sanders ones, and its seems fair to say that the pro-Clinton Democratic party officials were playing serious procedural hardball to squeeze out a couple more delegates for their candidate. Clinton has had a lock on virtually the entire party machinery from the start, and it's not so surprising that they'd behave accordingly.

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But Sanders' people have to make some concessions to the fact that American political structures are ridiculously antiquated, and it's going to take some time and consistent effort to be able to break through. Contesting the convention votes at the time, even with rowdy tactics, is perfectly legitimate, but it's beyond the pale to then flip out and start texting vile abuse to the convention chair. It's an odious thing to do, and all it accomplishes is front-page coverage in The New York Times about how Sanders supporters are probably all sociopaths.

And more broadly, while it's also completely fair to contest the primary up to the end, it's also true that it's basically impossible for Sanders to win at this point. Clinton has 1,767 pledged delegates to Sanders' 1,488, and there are 930 delegates remaining. To even tie Clinton, Sanders would have to win about two-thirds of the remaining delegates, absolutely crushing her in every single race. The only place he's posted that kind of margin is in Vermont — and in the biggest remaining delegate haul, California, he's behind in the polls by quite a bit. It's basically out of the question.

But on the other side, someone needs to show some magnanimity and mend some fences. Sanders' people shouldn't kill themselves over a couple delegates that can't possibly change the outcome of the primary, but it's even more ridiculous for Clinton's people to be playing for every conceivable procedural advantage when she already has the nomination in the bag. In particular, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the Democratic National Committee and longtime Clinton ally, badly needs to stop escalating. Just like she did during the voter data kerfluffle, she has been slamming Sanders on TV for not condemning the abusive phone calls firmly enough and "adding fuel to the fire." It's bad enough that the head of the party is an obvious partisan of one candidate, but it's worse when she acts as a de facto spokesperson.

All else aside, both camps need to look past the endless litigation of precisely who wronged whom. It's impossible for outsiders to parse, and neither side will ever be convinced anyway. The Clinton camp needs to demonstrate that it is willing to give Sanders some reasonable consideration, instead of seizing every possible excuse to shut him out of the process. The Sanders camp, meanwhile, needs to reckon with the fact that they lost the nomination fair and square. Nevada chicanery aside, he just didn't get the votes.

Of the two I think the Clinton camp is more important. Democratic Party hacks quite obviously do not want a bunch of fervent leftists joining up and upsetting their control over the political machinery with a long list of demands that aren't Paul Krugman-approved. They want loyal partisans who will cheer whatever the party churns out, no matter how tainted by the donor class or compromises with the Bush-era security apparatus.

But they're not going to get them. It turns out young people are enormously attracted to the Sanders vision of massive expansions in welfare spending and less use of force overseas, as Martin Longman points out. If Clinton wants to win big in November — and party elites want the upcoming generation to sign up with Democrats for good — they're going to have to make some concessions.