Bernie goes to where Trump won
Editor’s note: There have recently be a number of town hall meetings by the international leaders of Democrats Abroad, almost all of them supporters of Hillary Clinton in the primary, and it was the intention to balance the above video with Bernie Sanders with one of the DA town halls on this same page. But the current leadership has suppressed the recordings of those meetings. Well, fine. However, hiding and denying access will not give them a free pass on scrutiny in The Panama News.
Meanwhile, Democrats Abroad is choosing country chapter leaders and in May in the Washington suburbs will choose the next regional and international leaders. Internationally, Democrats Abroad voted 68 percent for Sanders in last year’s primary. It was 71 percent in Panama.
Almost all of the international leadership was for Hillary. Their main accomplishment was a shrinkage of Democrats Abroad from 53 country chapters to 40 between 2013 and 2016. Some of these people used their positions to retaliate in various ways against those who supported Sanders. These people are by and large running to retain control of the international organization. There have been several online Democrats Abroad town hall meetings in recent weeks, but the international leadership has not posted the video or audio recordings of these online. If they ever do, these will be posted in The Panama News if for historical value only. But so far this is the extent of the available DA video library.
On the Democrats Abroad international Facebook page, however, they ARE posting “party unity” messages like this one, featuring renowned experts like this guy. Which is a good illustration of why there is a movement to reject the old guard’s attempt to play musical chairs and retain control of an organization that they don’t represent.
Ah, well — Democrats. A rumble under the big tent would have plenty of precedent. But the leadership will change because the games that the current ones at the international level of Democrats Abroad play are unsustainable and the rank-and-file of both the progressive and corporate factions of the party know this. Odds are that Tom Perez is not actually a party leader in the mold of Debbie Wasserman Schultz or the current international leaders of Democrats Abroad. We shall see.
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