On the eve of the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia, the revelation – via a WikiLeaks document release – that the Democratic party actively campaigned against Bernie Sanders has shaken up a party that had hoped to put on a unified front against the Republicans and Donald Trump. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida congresswoman who serves as the head of the Democratic National Committee, has said she will resign in the wake of these allegations.

My question about all this is: what exactly did Wasserman Schultz do wrong?

While Bernie Sanders supporters are crowing victory and filling social media with articles about the DNC’s malfeasance, there is a fundamental point that everyone seems to be ignoring: Bernie Sanders is barely a Democrat.

Imagine you live in a small town. Let’s call it Rooseveltville. You’re very friendly with the folks who live in the next town over – Londontown. You invite them to summer barbecues; your kids compete on the same swim team. But there are fundamental differences between the two towns, and most people of Rooseveltville aren’t rushing to buy property in Londontown.

Then one charismatic politician from Londontown, Bernie Sanders, buys a small parcel of land in Rooseveltville with the express purpose of having a local address so he can run for mayor. He wants to make your town just like his town. His ardent supporters are suddenly everywhere in Rooseveltville, campaigning hard for his leadership.

The citizens of Rooseveltville are, naturally, aghast. Who is this interloper? Sure, they like a lot of his ideas. In truth, many of them wish Rooseveltville was a little bit more like Londontown, because sometimes it seems like without a jolt of progressive energy, they’ll turn into that town on the other side of the river, Trumpsylvania.

But the fact remains: Bernie Sanders isn’t from Rooseveltville, and the town’s political elite do all they can to defeat his candidacy.

I find it hard to believe that in the 16 months since Bernie Sanders first announced his candidacy, the world seems to have forgotten the fact that he was up until that moment an independent and “self-described socialist”.

There’s nothing wrong with independents or socialists. There should be more of both in American politics. But to express shock that the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz should actively work to keep a non-Democrat from receiving the party’s nomination seems rather naive. The Washington Post went so far as to claim that one of the most damning emails in the WikiLeaks dump was Wasserman Schultz complaining that Sanders spoke “like someone who has never been a member of the Democratic party and has no understanding of what we do.”

That statement doesn’t seem very damning. Like it or not, the system is designed to reward fealty to the party. Hillary Clinton has been a figure in Democratic politics since her husband’s first term as Arkansas governor in 1978; beginning with her prominent role as first lady for eight years – modeled on Eleanor Roosevelt – Clinton launched herself into a leadership role within the party. Is it any wonder that Wasserman Schultz and the DNC would actively work to reward that in the face of an insurgent campaign run by Sanders?

There are many Sanders supporters who take these email revelations as just another sign that politics is rigged. But guess what? Politics has been rigged since Thomas Jefferson and John Adams first faced off in 1796. Not only did both men’s surrogates denigrate the other side, but slaveholding states like Virginia had real electoral advantages: slaves couldn’t vote, of course, but each was counted as 3/5 of a person for congressional apportionment, which in turn, influenced the weight of the electoral college.

Internal division has been the hallmark of Democratic politics for over a century. But when William Jennings Bryan mounted his dark-horse candidacy for president in 1896, he did so from within the party. When the Democrats nearly split in half in 1924, it was because of factionalism within the party (over the KKK of all things). The Democrats have long been pulled between their conservative and liberal impulses, and there’s no reasons progressives can’t push the party to the left. Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has already campaigned to get rid of superdelegates, and that’s a good start. If progressives, independents and those tired of the Democratic party want real change, it needs to come from within.