When the Democratic National Committee tilted its presidential primary process in 2016 to help Hillary Clinton and block Sen. Bernie Sanders, critics heaped an avalanche of abuse on its head, reacting as though it had been caught doing something obviously wrong. My reaction, on the contrary, was, “Why shouldn’t the party favor someone who is actually a member of the party and whom it thinks will win?”

One is obliged to acknowledge that by putting a finger — maybe it was an elbow — on the scales for Clinton, the DNC made a massive blunder, shooing in a profoundly unappealing candidate doomed to humiliating defeat. But this miscalculation doesn’t change the principle of the thing, which is that a self-selecting group of politically active people should enjoy freedom of association and pick whomever they like as their champion. If you don’t like it, make your own party and pick your own candidate.