Posted on 01/17/2017 7:21:16 AM PST by SeekAndFind
When Republicans lost the majority in 2006 and the White House in 2008, the media focused on the splits in the GOP. When they began to regain control of Congress thanks to the grassroots efforts of the Tea Party, the media continued to focus on the coming Republican war. And when they won the White House last November, a great deal of attention continues to get paid to the divisions within the GOP.
Not nearly as much attention went to the other side of the aisle, not even after the bruising 2016 Democratic primary made those divisions obvious. Politico’s Gabriel DeBenedetti shines a light on the ongoing rift, made worse by the stunning loss of Hillary Clinton. The race for the DNC chair has turned into a proxy fight between these factions, and has also become a way of relitigating the primary and the DNC’s role in undermining the grassroots:
Long after the Democratic presidential nomination was settled, the bruising 2016 primary fight continues to divide the party, hindering Democrats’ ability to unite and prompting national party leaders to tiptoe around the issue in the hopes of avoiding an outbreak of Sanders-Clinton proxy wars. The bitter defeat at the hands of Donald Trump has exacerbated the tensions, leading to the rise of “Bernie would have won” and “Bernie’s challenge helped sink Hillary” camps, even if the battles are rarely framed in such explicit terms. Now, with the chairmanship of the DNC and party nominations in multiple 2017 races at stake, some Democrats are desperately trying to strike a balance and remind rank-and-file activists of the real enemy.
“The old-fashioned way to do this is to purge the party, but that’s not the way things work anymore,” said former Vermont governor and DNC chairman Howard Dean, who himself passed on a second run for the chairmanship in December specifically because he was worried about the prospect of an overly divisive race. “The party can’t win if it’s not inclusive, and the way to be inclusive is not to re-litigate the old battle. And there’s obviously some attempt to do that.”
“There are some people who are itching to have this fight,” Dean, a 2004 presidential candidate and 2016 Clinton backer, added. “I think it’s silly, and I think they’re going to lose.”
At first blush, this appears to be a necessary exercise on two levels. First, Democrats need to lance the boil of the DNC’s corruption by the Clinton machine in 2016. They have been somewhat reluctant to discuss this because of the way the information came out, especially since the party and the Obama administration has seized on Russian hacking as their excuse for losing the election. At some point, however, they will have to deal with the reality exposed by those hacked e-mails, and perhaps even more so because the Clintons’ thumb on the scale was pretty obvious under Debbie Wasserman Schultz’ leadership all along anyway.
More to the point, Democrats have to come to grips with the fact that they stopped speaking for most Americans over the past eight years, and started lecturing at Americans instead. The party got wrapped up in the progressive-academic social-justice agenda to the point that the party made diversity into an obsession at the expense of the real economic issues facing voters outside of the coastal enclaves and college campuses.
Unfortunately for Democrats, they’re still picking between two different flavors of that same progressive-agenda obsession:
The Sanders wing’s preferred candidate, Rep. Keith Ellison, has repeatedly gone out of his way to frame himself as the “unity” candidate against his main opponent, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, a top Clinton surrogate in 2016 who has been flexing his own progressive muscles to appeal to the party’s left wing.
It’s going to be a long winter in the wilderness for the Democrats if all they’re doing is picking which faction gets to lead them on the same agenda that lost them the presidential election in November, four straight Congressional elections, and put them at a century-long low mark in state legislatures.
The demoncrats started the last civil war. No surprise here.
One of the untold stories of the past several years is how the Clintons thoroughly corrupted the Democratic Party (as if it wasn't corrupt enough already) to their advantage. They turned the party into their private organization to launch Hillary's presidential run. Once again, the Clintons destroyed something that they touched. If I were a Democrat, I'd be furious with the Clintons and I'd want them completely expelled from the party. The Bushes weakened the Republican Party and pushed it to stand for a "moderate" mish-mash of nothing. But the Clintons have done worse to the Democratic Party.
I am so sad, can’t you just see the tears!
Do I really need to add a sarcasm tag?
May they wander in the wilderness eternally.
The Left has been aggressively attacking America and the Constitution for the last 120 years or so. It’s time for the Right to stand up to these phony self-righteous hypocrites and take America back. THAT means, among other things, DISMANTLING the 70% to 80% unconstitutional portion of the federal government.
Let’s take the battle to them. Bring it on. And may God help us to win and restore our Free Constitutional Republic.
Are they that far gone?
I wonder if Perez wins he will be labled as a “White Hispanic” and the losers will complain it’s just another white guy in charge as usual?
RE: Keith Ellison or Tom Perez?
Are they that far gone?
_____________________________
Let’s see .... taking down any mention of “God” in their platform ( only to grudgingly put it back after a sham show of hands ).
Taking down any mention of support for Israel in their platform....
Supporting lawless sanctuary cities....
Even considering a terrorist organization supporting Congressman to be DNC chairman and having their minority senate leader speak highly of him...
I’d like to say they aren’t far gone.... but I can’t.
Kief Ellison will be in sort of a pickle. But he’ll simply replace God with asshole Allah!
And the new Grass Roots for the Democratic Party? The Tea-Baggers.
They’re going to iron out their differences and become a centrist fighting force when they meet in crime-infested Atlanta Feb 27-28. NOT!!!
They will gravitate even more to the darkside, left of left, until they have to look up to see where down was.
They will name Ellison (my first choice, too) as Chair; and they will roll out Villaraigosa as their favorite designated hitter for prez.
If you want to get a taste of things to come, just peruse this link:
http://demrulz.org/category/dnc
It is the VA party talking; but it represents as well as can be the national dem situation. All the way from “Rulz” and “Electionz” with the ebonic spellingz, etc., the reader will notice the flavor of the 2017 dem quagmire that Trump has created (albeit with massive dem cooperation — and they think they are being uncooperative?). Enjoy.
So the struggle comes down to full out communist or the party of Allah (Satan)?
True and well stated. The only thing that gives me a
little heart burn is calling them the ‘Democratic’ party.
That is their false use of the word which compliments
those jackasses more than they deserve. They are the
Democrat party, period.
Liberals are lazy. there is no civil war with them. Soros pays people to riot and those are the only ones that do.
“The bitter defeat at the hands of Donald Trump has exacerbated the tensions, leading to the rise of “Bernie would have won” and “Bernie’s challenge helped sink Hillary” camps...”
The best thing about this is that both sides are absolutely wrong in their conclusions. So no matter which side wins, they will continue to pursue foolish ideas that probably won’t help them.
I’d rather bless them than curse them, so I’ll hope that they succeed at the ballot box.... in direct proportion to their love of God & country ;)
Looks like a lose-lose situation for America if either heads the party. The Democrats continue moving left in their effort to socialize America.
So the struggle comes down to full out communist or the party of Allah (Satan)?
Well...yes.
There are so few sane people left in the party that this is exactly what it comes down to. The bad news is they have a lock on almost every public facing entity. MSM, Hollywood, Ad agencies, Education. Were it not for their constant propaganda the Rats would be 15% approval. As it is they have gotten a pretty hefty piece of the electorate questioning Trumps legitimacy. Thanks Obama, Linda and McTraitor you pricks.
I make sure and tell every Democrat I know that “either Bernie or Biden would have won”.
Not one of them has argued the point.
The Democratic leadership and the Democratic grass-roots have formed a perfect circular firing squad!
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