In the short-term, accusing party elites of unfairly intervening in the political process might have a political payoff. It will likely motivate die-hard Sanders supporters to volunteer or donate money. And it could help Sanders gain leverage in the lead up to the Democratic National Convention. Fearful of the party being torn apart, party leaders may be more deferential to Sanders’s demands in the hope that he will ultimately help broker peace. There are already indications that the senator is starting to get his way. On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Sanders has been “given unprecedented say over the Democratic Party platform,” noting that party officials have permitted him to name five people to the “15-member committee that writes the platform.”
But in the long-term, the same strategy could undermine Sanders’s goal of creating a lasting political movement. If the campaign suggests the primary election has not proceeded fairly, its supporters may give up on the idea that political reform is even possible. The Boston College political science professor David Hopkins describes the risk this way: “Complaints about a rigged system may breed more apathy and cynicism than motivation to remain productively active in party politics,” he wrote in an analysis of the Nevada convention. “If the lesson drawn by Sanders and his supporters from the 2016 nomination race is ‘the fix is in’ rather than ‘good start—let’s get ’em next time,’ it will be harder to sustain momentum for their agenda within the Democratic Party and the electoral arena more broadly past the end of this campaign.”
