Memphis Democrat Kicked Out: “Party of Inclusion is Everything But”

This week, the Tennessee Democratic Party voted to knock Memphis Rep. John DeBerry off the party’s August primary ballot, the culmination of the party’s long-held disdain for the lawmaker, who refuses to align himself with the Democratic agenda up and down the list. DeBerry views himself as an independent thinker, and he’s frustrated state Democratic leaders with several of his votes, which have led him to cross the aisle on everything from abortion to school choice.

Now, in an interview with the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper, DeBerry is lashing out at the Democratic Party for its ideological rigidity, which he says leaves no room for dissent.

“The so-called party of inclusion is everything but inclusive,” he told the paper. “It’s all about thinking with one brain, marching in step and following the company line, sitting there like a brainless idiot and letting them tell you what to do.”

DeBerry said the party had left him behind.

“They changed their values,” he said. “They changed their values and demanded everyone acquiesce. That’s not democracy. They don’t have the right to tell a sitting legislator how to vote.”

DeBerry said that his removal from the ballot was an insult to democracy.

“What happened yesterday was basically unprecedented,” he said. “Without notice, without warning, without time to garner a defense or allow people from my district to make any type of comment, I was removed by a tribunal.”

In the interview, DeBerry said it was a relatively new thing for the Democratic Party to criticize and cast out their own members for working across the aisle. He noted that, as a matter of pure politics, you needed Republican votes to pass any Democrat bill in Tennessee.

Still, State Democratic Party spokesperson Emily Cupples said that there had been several complaints filed against DeBerry for such sins as donating to Republican candidates and receiving money from conservative organizations and individuals. She also told the Commercial Appeal that DeBerry did not support such Democratic Party platforms as making vote-by-mail universal.

“The almost 30-page challenge against Rep. DeBerry included complaints about his record of public service and actions and demonstrated that he was not faithful to the interests and success of the Democratic Party,” she said. “If John DeBerry were a first-time candidate and he had a majority of Republican endorsements paired with this platform that clearly does not align with the Democratic Party values, he would have been removed from the ballot just the same.”

Well, we have to assume that DeBerry – much like New Jersey’s Jeff Van Drew – is only now coming to the conclusion that today’s Democratic Party has very little in common with the Democratic Party of old. The party of Hillary Clinton is far more radical than the party of Bill Clinton, and it’s only getting more radical by the day.

And even now, with the party at its most left-wing, insane status of all time, you have nutters like AOC and Bernie calling on them to go even further. It’s only a matter of time before many other Democratic lawmakers (and voters) decide that they can no longer support this Marxist mafia.