They became the machine they swore to destroy

(JNS) — I grew up inside a political machine. My father and friends ran the Brooklyn, N.Y., reformers love to denounce. In 2010, when a group calling itself the New Kings Democrats came to tear that machine down, I was one of the people defending it. I know what a machine looks like from the inside. I know how it rewards loyalty, protects its own and decides races before the voters ever do.

The insurgents had a case, and parts of it were true. Machines grow comfortable. They get closed and self-dealing and certain of their own permanence. The New Kings Democrats promised something better: tran...