lpetrich
Contributor
Entire Staff of Nevada Democratic Party Quits After DSA Slate Won Every Seat - The Intercept
Then on how that progressive bloc grew and got the top spots in that state's Democratic Party.The battle between the insurgent progressive wing of the party and what’s known in Nevada as the Reid machine — a tightly run operation still guided by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — began five years ago, when Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders organized support for his 2016 presidential primary run, while Reid was working behind the scenes to help his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
This seems like some left-wing version of what the Tea Partiers and the Trumpies have been doing to the Republican Party.The mass exodus of party staff, despite the rhetoric around unity, wasn’t a shock, Whitmer told The Intercept. “We weren’t really surprised, in that we were prepared for it,” she said. “But what hit us by surprise and was sort of shocking is that for a slate that claimed that they were all about unity, and kept this false narrative of division going on throughout the entire campaign — in fact they kept intensifying that — that’s what was surprising about it, was the willingness to just walk away, instead of working with us.”
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Reid also wanted the caucus to help build the party’s infrastructure, and that worked too. After years of Republican control, Democrats now hold the governor’s mansion, the state Senate, and the state House, as well as both U.S. Senate seats. Without those two senators, there’d be no Democratic majority in the Senate today. But the caucuses also created an opening for Sanders, and his supporters have run through it to swamp the party. Instead of finding a way to work with the newcomers, the Reid machine is setting up an independent shop. Reid declined to comment.