So you don't care if a small number of party leaders influence primaries for the good of "democracy" or "the party"?
You think it's wrong for that information about secret DNC bias to get leaked, or it's only wrong if it's leaked by a foreign party? How do you know Putin leaked it rather than Seth Rich?
What you're outlining for the role of political parties seems to be that they should strongly bias and rubber-stamp frontrunner candidates who are then rubber-stamped by primary voters who have been persuaded by bias and propaganda from the party leaders during the primary campaigns.
I don't know what the word democracy means anymore if you think that conforms to its definition.
Even having primaries be anything other than overtly symbolic is a relatively recent feature of the system, for both parties.
The norm has long been that you vote with your membership: you join the party whose leaders you trust most to serve your interests, and then (notionally) those leaders make decisions that they expect will retain and attract members.
Sure. They're ultimately tasked with winning elections. If a neo-Nazi ran for the party's presidential ticket, I don't think anyone would question their right to oppose that.
Sanders was no neo-Nazi (clearly!), but I'm not shocked the Democratic Party leadership flinched internally at the prospect of a non-Democrat jumping into the race and affecting the chances of the most viable candidate in the general election.
> If the RNC did the same thing I'd be complaining about them too, but they didn't in this last election.
They absolutely did the same thing. I have 100% certainty that a leak of the RNC's emails would show similar internal efforts to prevent a Trump candidacy.
> The RNC and DNC are organizations intended to help their parties' voters pick among several primary candidates. That they failed at it doesn't change the fact that they publicly expressed the preferences you're aghast at the Democrats expressing internally.
That's one of their responsibilities. They also have, per their bylaws, responsibilities to win elections for the benefit of their respective parties and their values.