Posted on 11/12/2016 11:11:36 AM PST by Petrosius
The Republican civil war was supposed to start this week.
Instead, a ferocious struggle has erupted on the left over the smoldering remains of the Democratic Party.
Liberals are seething over the election and talking about launching a Tea Party-style revolt. They say it’s the only way to keep Washington Democrats connected to the grassroots and to avoid a repeat of the 2016 electoral disaster, which blindsided party elites.
Progressives believe the Democratic establishment is responsible for inflicting Donald Trump upon the nation, blaming a staid corporate wing of the party for nominating Hillary Clinton and ignoring the Working Class voters that propelled Trump to victory.
Liberals interviewed by The Hill want to see establishment Democrats targeted in primaries, and the “Clinton-corporate wing” of the party rooted out for good.
The fight will begin over picking a new leader for the Democratic National Committee.
Progressives are itching to see the national apparatus reduced to rubble and rebuilt from scratch, with one of their own installed at the top.
And there is talk among some progressives, like Bill Clinton’s former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, about splitting from the Democratic Party entirely if they don’t get the changes they seek.
“The Democratic Party can no longer be the same, it has been repudiated,” Reich said on a conference call with members from the progressive grassroots group Democracy for America.
“This has been a huge refutation of establishment politics and the political organization has got to be changed...if the Democratic Party can’t do it, we’ll do it through a third party.”
Reich’s view is far from universal in his party.
A number of Democrats are fuming over pie-in-the-sky liberals who they say prized idealism over pragmatism.
In an election determined by enthusiasm, some blame Bernie Sanders supporters for either not showing up or for suppressing turnout by refusing to rally behind Clinton at an earlier date.
“The Sanders people should be mad at themselves,” said one well-connected Democratic strategist. “If they had come out to vote, Donald Trump wouldn’t be president. If they were trying to prove a point, all they’ve done is further damage everything they claim to be fighting for. It’s somewhat typical of that crowd.”
Sanders supporters reject that reading.
Jacob Limon, the Texas director for the Sanders campaign, said he voted for Clinton and followed Sanders’ lead in rallying liberals to get to the polls for the Democratic nominee.
“Progressives showed up,” Limon said, noting that the election in Texas was closer than it has been in 20 years. The problem, he said, was Clinton’s trustworthiness.
Regardless, the left feels ascendant, with the party’s biggest stars – Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren – carrying a mantle that even some Clinton allies acknowledge is more inline with the zeitgeist.
“One thing for sure is that the Democratic Party will lean more on Bernie than Hillary going forward,” said David Goodfriend, a Clinton supporter and former Bill Clinton administration official.
To some liberals, that means a wholesale purging of the “corporate dominated” wing of the party.
“They’ll hold on to the party mechanisms until you rip it out of their dying hands,” said Jonathan Tasini, a Sanders surrogate. “It’s all about power and money and influence for them.”
The first fight over the party’s future will play out in the race for DNC chairman.
Sanders has endorsed Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) – a Muslim and a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus – to be the new DNC chief.
For many liberals, nothing less than a wholesale gutting of that institution will do.
“Everybody in the building needs to be fired immediately,” Cenk Uygur, the host of the progressive political commentary show The Young Turks, told The Hill.
After that, progressives are eyeing the 2018 midterm elections — and potential primaries for lawmakers they believe are gumming-up the works — as the next big fight.
It’s a strategy Sanders has endorsed and his supporters are eager to take up.
“We have to install the playbook of the Tea Party,” said Ohio state lawmaker Nina Turner, a Sanders surrogate. “The Tea Party had mainstream Republicans shaking in their boots. Even the ones that hung on knew they had to listen to what the grassroots was saying. Obviously, we don’t want to govern anything like the Tea Party, but from a tactical standpoint, we have to run and support progressive candidates to keep the establishment honest.”
That burgeoning fight is already frustrating some Washington Democrats, who are fearful that the left will hold them to the kind of rigid ideological purity tests that were once the domain of the right.
That would be counter-productive, said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.).
“I love [Sanders],” he said. “But I think his objective is very different from the objective of the Democratic Party as a whole…I think he tried to help, I think he did everything he could. But he cannot help if he’s starting off from the wrong principle. And the wrong principle [is]: The enemy of the good is the perfect.”
There are some areas of agreement among Democrats.
The party suffered a rout in the Rust Belt and Midwest states, as Working Class white voters abandoned them for Trump.
The Hill reached former Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), who was in charge of Clinton’s White House transition team, as he packed up to leave Washington and return to his farm in Southern Colorado.
“There were people who felt left out of he economy over the last eight years who were never able to get back on their feet, blue collar men and women,” Salazar said. “Donald Trump was able to capture them in terms of emotion and sentiment.”
“Democrats have not done very well in rural America and I don’t understand why that has happened. The broader question is how to have a Democratic Party that can attract those working men and women.”
I think that the exhumation of Joseph Stalin to run as their party’s next nominee is a worthy idea.
They need to rename themselves the Socialist Party USA, Socialist Progressive Party USA, or at least the Socialist Democrat Party USA.
That’s who and what they have become since 1968. They need to be true to their goals.
I knew liberals can’t stand the Constitution, but this cinches it. I mean, what exactly, constitutionally, did Donald Trump do wrong? He won, fair and square. No chads, no Supreme Court decisions, no stuffed ballot boxes. So, even if you follow the rules, the libs threaten revolution.
More than I know what to do with. C’mon over.
Ha!
A UK citizen has started a petition to place Obamugabe in the Prime Minister of UK Parliament.
Man, you -just- cant make this s**t up!
Wall Street and the Silicon Valley billionaires have no intention of giving away their power in the Democratic Party to radical snowflakes.
This is going to be fun to watch!
Stop stealing their money and giving it to non-working men and women.
Good time to invest. Some suggestions:
Act II
American Pop Corn Company
Angie’s Kettle Corn
Butterkist
Cape Cod
Cracker Jack
Crunch ‘n Munch
Fiddle Faddle
Healthy Choice
Jiffy Pop
Karmelkorn
LesserEvil
Lolly Gobble Bliss Bombs
Lucky Elephant Popcorn
Market Pantry
Orville Redenbacher’s
Pop Secret
Pop Weaver
Popcorn, Indiana
Poppycock
Screaming Yellow Zonkers
Smartfood
Trail’s End
“Liberals are seething over the election and talking about launching a Tea Party-style revolt.”
Speaking of the Tea Party I feel this election was another extension of the Tea Party. The Tea Party people never went anywhere and are still here. By the way I am not the first one to say this.
Let's encourage them to take actions like they encouraged us to do....the difference being we can actually tell them to do what they intend to do....
LOL! Sanders is not even a Democrat. He switched back to Independent after getting schlonged by Hillary.
Yes, the Dems need a revolution.
Remember how the entire GOP-e always said they had to move to the left to get the votes to win.
Guess what you commie scum Marxists that gave us the rapist traitor Bill Clinton and the Muslim traitor Barack Hussein Obama, you all have to move to the right — FAR TO THE RIGHT — if you want to win in 2024. Far, far to the right you commie scum.
When the Tea Party was created the media called us all a bunch of right wing racist zealots..when the left comes up with their own Commie party the media will declare it to be a glorious day
Speaking of Stalin... https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/11/george-w-bush-did-not-kill-millions-of-people-that-was-joseph-stalin
BEST ELECTION EVER!!!
True.
The complainers dont understand the situation, because nobody they listen to has told them. Thats the result of the bad guys owning the press.
Maybe its finally Michael Moores moment to be useful.
The people spoke and said they are tired of being Socialists.
The commie scum Democrat Party needs to get a clue and quit pushing the US toward totalitarian tyranny. Or, they can just lose every election from now on.
Americans don’t want to live in a communist nation. They don’t.
We have the Tea Party in honor of the original December 16, 1773 Boston Tea Party. I expect the left wants an Ekaterinburg Party in honor of the one on July 17, 1918.
This is GREAT news. It will push them Left of Satan.
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