For those who don’t know what the Iron Law of Institutions is:

What he’s overlooking is that the Democrats operate according to the Iron Law of Institutions. The Iron Law of Institutions is: the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution “fail” while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

Which brings us to the Alabama Democratic Party (boldface mine):

Nancy Worley is bad at her job.

She has no vision, no competence, and most importantly, no common sense.

As the Alabama Democratic Party chairwoman, she has been a failure.

But, on Saturday, the Alabama State Democratic Executive Committee renewed its four-year lease on that failure, re-electing Worley as its party chair…

Before we get to how this happened, it’s important to understand just how bad Worley has been, and sadly, the best place to start is the commode.

Four years ago, Worley mailed a holiday letter. It was the sort of Christmas letter your aunt might send to family, recounting that year’s harrowing vacation to the Grand Canyon or your uncle’s gallbladder surgery.

But Worley’s letter didn’t just go to family and immediate friends. She mailed it to party members and donors throughout the state.

In it, she described in detail how she had gotten stuck on the toilet in her home for hours and couldn’t get up…

But this was not an isolated instance of bad judgment. Other dumb mistakes have nearly landed Worley in prison.

While serving as Alabama Secretary of State in 2006, Worley solicited campaign help from her office staff — for which she was indicted on felony ethics charges. In a deal with prosecutors, she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and agreed to pay a $100 fine and $1,245 in court costs.

Then she never paid, at least not until called out for it in the press last year.

Worley insisted the whole thing was a political prosecution and said nobody had sent her a bill to pay.

More recently, Worley has failed to file ethics disclosures as required by state law…

The party has struggled with debt. For reasons you probably can imagine, a lot of donors don’t want to flush their money down Worley’s toilet.

Under Worley’s leadership, the party has failed at free things, too — like Twitter. While Donald Trump tweets about 12 times a day, the Alabama Democratic Party’s Twitter account hasn’t posted anything in six months…

“Our candidates are going to have to go it alone, just like I did,” said Sen. Doug Jones, who backed Worley’s challenger, Montgomery lawyer Peck Fox. “We need to have a party. We don’t have a party. There is no social media. There’s no outreach. There’s no get out the vote effort. There’s no organization. There’s no field. And the vote today was simply to keep that.”

I believe some asshole with a blog mentioned the consequences, bad ones, of letting criminals dodge being convicted of felonies. But the reason why is a doozy:

Because party boss Joe Reed backed her.

The structural problem of the Alabama Democratic Party is a 1991 federal consent decree to give proportionate racial representation on the executive committee. The party’s minority caucus gets to appoint at-large seats until the party’s executive committee has the same racial balance as the Democratic electorate in the last presidential election.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

What really happens is that the head of that caucus, Reed, gives these appointments to people who are loyal to him. The result is a politically impervious, self-appointing majority that follows Reed’s orders.

And lest any outsiders try to cast this as a white-black divide in the party, there are many black Democrats in Alabama who loathe Reed. But folks like state Sen. Vivian Davis Figures and state Rep. Chris England, who don’t follow Reed’s orders, get shut out, too…

On Saturday, Reed backed Worley again, spitting in the face of Jones, and England, and even women’s rights rockstar Lilly Ledbetter, who ran unsuccessfully for party secretary.

Winning office in Alabama as a Democrat will never be easy. But Senator Doug Jones showed it can be done with hard work and some luck. Being this incompetent means the hard work isn’t being done, so any rare advantages Democrats have are being fumbled.

We need better Democrats.