Elaine Kamarck previously argued for more superdelegates. Now she's defending the DCCC's interference in primaries on the grounds that uh, there weren't many black people in the districts.

Left-wing Democrats frequently argue about the need to mobilize the base as a reason to run progressive candidates. But the strongest part of the Democratic base consists of African-Americans, and among the districts the D.C.C.C. has intervened in, only two have African-American populations that are in the double digits, and the average African-American population in these swing districts is only about 7 percent... In those districts, the name of the game will be to turn out Democrats but also to move some white voters into the Democratic column.

Kamarck's general argument is equally incoherent but it seems to stem from the idea that political parties are private clubs and the leaders of those clubs ought to be able to do whatever they want with them because they are, er, "more concerned with electability than with ideological purity". Leaving aside the fact that the DCCC's track record on determining who is "electable" has been terrible, the real issue is that voters should get to vote for their candidates in fair elections. Voters can use whatever criteria they like - electability, purity, actual policy positions, whatever - in deciding who to vote for. But the elections should be fair. The quaint notion that political parties are private clubs is technically true thanks to a lack of foresight from the framers of the constitution, but we've been correcting that mistake over the years by making primaries more and more open, and Kamarck is weirdly invested in trying to undo that. What's ironic is that the same people who make the argument about the parties being private clubs will howl and scream when people vote for third parties, and will fight to exclude those parties from ballot access, debates, etc.. The two main parties are the only game in town, and they shouldn't be rigged by "party leaders".