Posted on 04/28/2017 4:33:50 PM PDT by Kaslin
Time will tell if the Democratic Party’s charted course to progressive purity will be successful. Right now, Democrat Jon Ossoff is facing Republican Karen Handel in Georgia’s sixth congressional district runoff, which will be held in June. In Montana, Rob Quist is also trying to win over voters through heavy usage of firearms in his ads. The question Aaron Blake of The Washington Post asks is 'why did the Republican Party have such success with the Tea Party wave of 2010, knocking off members of Congress that conservatives felt were too moderate, while Democrats seem to be foundering.' If anything, it’s become a train wreck, with both the progressive wing of the Democratic Party flocking to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the establishment represented by newly elected DNC chair Tom Perez. The two kicked off a unity tour, which ended last week. Perez was booed and heckled at multiple stops. Also, Sanders isn’t a Democrat, something he makes clear with a tinge of pride in the inflection of such a declaration.
At the same time, Perez is no moderate Democrat; he’s pretty far left himself. What Blake found out is that reality is the Democratic Party’s biggest obstacle, using the Montana, Georgia, Nebraska, and Kansas elections to demonstrate the point. In Omaha, Nebraska, more heartburn hit the Democratic Party when Sanders backed Heath Mello, who is running for mayor. Mello supported a sonogram bill while serving in the state legislature, which led to Perez's declaration that to be a Democrat and get DNC support, you have to be pro-abortion:
In all four cases, Democrats have flirted with a purity focus in four tough areas of the country. Each shows how difficult that is to pull off.
And that's got to be frustrating for progressives. After all, Republicans have fought over purity for years, with the tea party giving the GOP establishment repeated fits. And the GOP only continued its ascent in Congress and now to the presidency. Why can't Democrats do the same with progressivism? Why can't they run like Sanders in Montana and Wichita and Omaha and suburban Atlanta?
The reason is pretty simple: reality. Because of the way our population is distributed, Democrats can't afford to enforce the kind of doctrinaire purity that the tea party was so successful in policing.
[…]
Democrats won the House because socially and culturally conservative candidates carried conservative states districts in the South and along the Rust Belt in 2006 and 2008. Schumer led the recruiting effort in the Senate, and Pelosi became speaker as a result of then-DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel's political pragmatism. They know the deal.
The Democrats' tendency these days will be to demand their party be as un-Trump and un-Republican as possible in trying to win back control of Congress. These examples show how bumpy that path is already proving.
And it shows how losing ground in the rural states can lead to a slow gutting of your political operation. You simply cannot win back the House if you only dominate the urban areas—and Democrats are increasingly becoming an urban-based and coastal party. That’s not enough to win back the presidency or Congress. If Democrats don’t back those remaining red state Democrats who have proven they can win in Republican states, then prepare for a long stay in the political wilderness. In many ways, the Democratic Party is already there. Reaching out to white working class voters is the ticket to reclaiming the majority, though the urban-based elites who shun white voters for the sake of being the point of the lance for diversity will probably not let this fly. Another thing is that we’re a right-of-center nation. We lean to the right on social issues. We want to pay fewer taxes, we want a smaller government, we like our guns, and we feel that big government, not corporations, poses the biggest threat to our freedoms and liberties. Not necessarily fertile ground for a hyper left progressive movement to sweep the nation. We also walk a waffled line on abortion; with most saying that Roe v. Wade shouldn’t be overturned, but favor strict regulations on the procedure. For example, almost 60 percent support banning abortion after 20 weeks. That includes 60 percent of American women. The Democratic Party’s position is perilously close to supporting full-blown abortion on demand, which isn’t popular. Concerning government, liberals are the movement that believes more power in the hands of fewer people is key to securing a better form of social justice. Again, it is reality, but also one that is based in policy too. The Perez/Sanders Democratic Party is simply too far left to succeed in areas that they need to win in order to have a political renaissance.
Doing purges when it is still a free country seems to be putting the cart before the horse.
This is an experiment?Some people just don’t know when it’s time to quit and cut their losses.
We lost because we are too liberal.. file under duh!
God already blessed us with the current dnc leadership.
If He smiles on us again, this is a picture of the democrat 2020 Presidential candidate team.
My advice to dems => Embrace Antifa. You’ll never lose another election!
They should move back to Kennsdy, Jackson, and Moynihan. I gusss Ryan should conaider that too.
But what about diversity??
It's all so confusing... ;)
I think his observation of the matter of urban / rural divide stands on its own as correct, but it's not the answer to this question.
The Tea Party wanted the Republican Party to get back to basics, to the ideological environment of a few decades past of measurably smaller government, measurably less regulation, measurably less illegal immigration and associated lawlessness, etc.
The would-be leftists, however, want to pull the Democrat party not "back to basics", as in fact the Democratic party of a few decades past was less inclined toward identity politics and class warfare, nanny state overreach, government goodies (no free phone service, for example), immigration lawlessness, the use of the courts to replace election failures, etc.
They do not want to pull the party in that direction, but further along its current path to more, much more, of all of that. (And add "complete suppression of thoughts and actions that differ from the Party line".) And there are a number of decent people in the Democrat Party that don't like that trajectory.
We will find out if He also has a sense of humor if the suddenly omnipresent Maxine Waters eventually becomes part of the picture instead. :-)
What they democRATS and their libtarded urban/coastal base fail to understand is that the very places where they
1) get their food
2) get their water
3) get their electricity
4) get their gasoline/fuels
are inhabited by, and the apparatus managed and run by, the folks who they despise.
IF we look at NYC for example, it’s food comes from outside, it’s water is stored in reservoirs upstate, its electricity is supplied by power plants upstate, it’s fuels come from outside.
Those of us who inhabit those places, were to cut off the power, water, food and fuel to NYC...how long would it take for bedlam to erupt? Two, maybe three minutes would be a fair guess.
And just what do they think they could do to restore those things that were cut off? We could stand at the bridges, and tunnels and shoot them as they emerged from their rampages.
We could easily lay siege to NYC and there would be absolutely zero they could do about it.
They would be wise to keep that in mind, as they talk $h!t about us.
ROTFLMAO, the Democrats carry only 14 state legislatures. Thanks, Obama administration.
Keep up the militant Marxism...I know I’m pleased with our new direction - over 1000 seats lost by Dems.
I want you on my team! :)
I personally want to see a Michelle/Chelsea ticket for the democrats.
After all, those are the “ladies” which the liberals have been admiring so much lately. They can’t miss.
You didn't used to have to look up and down the Dem roster several times to find somebody who loved his country and was willing to say so. You can try it a hundred times these days and still come up dry. That isn't rhetorical: these are people who really do believe that they are the proper guardians of world historical progress, and just as the rich guy needs a club to the head and his pockets rifled through on a local level, so does the richest nation on a global level. They don't love their country, they don't even like it a little. They just want to run it.
You mean hating whitey is not a winning strategy???? Hating Christians???? Now what is a racist demonrat to do?
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