This is an opinion column.

Party politics on cable news can be interesting. But the intra-party politics of national and state executive committees should come with one of those warnings at the ends of prescription drug commercials.

Stop listening and get help immediately if you have changes in behavior or thinking …

On Friday, the Democratic National Committee’s Rules & Bylaws Committee met by phone. For about an hour, I listened to some painfully deliberate people discuss the finer points of caucusing rules in Iowa before the committee got to our dear old Alabama.

… bleeding from eyes, bleeding from ears …

Because as difficult as this stuff is to get through, a great deal is at stake: Nothing less than whether Alabama will be allowed to participate in next year’s Democratic primary. Or if it will survive at all.

… night terrors, loss of taste, loss of smell …

“It is amazing how little we have asked of Alabama, and how resistant they have been of everything,” said former Clinton Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes said Friday who, with Maryland Democrat Yvette Lewis, is tasked with resuscitating a dying Alabama party.

… aggression, hostility, suicidal thoughts or actions …

And with Alabama, the medicine never goes down easy.

Political triage

Here’s the short version of how we got here.

Alabama Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Worley retained her party office last year through an election that looked a lot like cheating: 190 of the state party’s committee members voted, according to Worley’s headcount, even though only 142 committee members had signed up to vote. Worley won by 12 votes.

One DNC official called last year’s Alabama party elections something from the Keystone Cops, with Worley inventing rules and procedures out of thin air.

Since then, the DNC has demanded Alabama do three things:

Pass new bylaws that match the national party’s rules.

Hold new elections for state officers.

Submit an acceptable delegate selection plan for next year’s presidential primary.

And Alabama has done … err … let’s see … none of those things.

Instead of consenting to the DNC’s intervention, Worley has stubbornly refused, blowing off deadlines and spending what’s left of the party’s dwindling cash on lawyers to fight the DNC. Last month the DNC got sick enough of Worley that it stripped her of her DNC membership.

After that, DNC chairman Tom Perez sent Alabama Democrats a letter warning that their participation in next year’s convention is in jeopardy.

And on Friday, the DNC escalated the conflict again: Passing new Alabama bylaws and giving them to the state party to vote on. The DNC resolution also demands the Alabama party hold new elections by Oct. 19.

Lewis said it’s important the DNC monitor any Alabama elections.

“In light of the circumstance of what’s gone on before, it’s mandatory that we have someone there," she told the committee.

A poisoned party

The reason for Worley’s intransigence is simple: These new rules will dilute, if not destroy, the power she and vice-chair Joe Reed, hold within the Alabama Party.

This week, Worley again accused the DNC of being part of a racist conspiracy with Sen. Doug Jones, trying to “beat Alabama into submission.”

Worley’s control over the state party probably wouldn’t be such a big deal if she had shown any competence running it. But in the last four years, she and Reed have made one embarrassing blunder after another:

Strong-arming candidates into contributing to an unregistered PAC.

Ignoring free social media tools, especially Twitter.

Letting the party’s website registration lapse and be taken over by ads for weight loss scams and cheap abortions.

Sending committee members and party donors a strange and meandering Christmas letter describing, among other things, how Worley had gotten stuck on a toilet.

It’s up to Worley and Alabama Democrats to decide whether to accept the changes the national party is handing down. If Worley refuses to call a state party meeting, a majority of the state committee members can do that for her.

“Given the lack of cooperation, I’m not at all sanguine that Worley is going to do any of this,” Ickes told the other DNC members.

The DNC resolution included yet another warning: Approve these bylaws or risk “further and appropriate action by the RBC up to and including further action on the delegate selection plan.”

Translation: Take your medicine or y’all ain’t coming to Milwaukee next year.

Those party officials on the conference call may live and work in the mind-numbing minutiae of party rules and procedures. Like ER docs, they can spend hours with their fingers poking the insides of a dying patient.

But with Alabama, even they seem to have found the limit of how much even they can take. In the meeting Friday, Ickes said he, Lewis and the others tasked with fixing Alabama had expected to be working on this for a year.

“I think if any of us had known then what we know now,” Ickes said, “none of us would have agreed to have done this.”

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.

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