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.”
Get rid of the communists and crazy left wing wack jobs!
I preach, to my family, and anyone else who will listen (who is usually virtually no one), that the peace and stability of the American experience is exceedingly rare over the long course of human history. I, my parents, my kids...we have grown complacent. We take it all for granted. Your words ring with truth.
At one meeting, Biden was introducing various individuals and he came to the name of Robert Reich and said “stand up Robert”..... oops
Stop trying to put a man in the women's bathroom. Stop allowing homosexual activists to pervert your party and our country. Stop allowing unvetted muslims into our country. Stop encouraging illegal immigration. Stop the idiotic sanctuary city policy. Stop trying to take away our guns and stop lying about supporting the Second Amendment. You don't. Stop using our military as a social experimentation laboratory. And have some respect for our military. And our police. Stop crying racism, homophobia, intolerance and bigotry over every little perceived slight. Stop trying to indoctrinate our children in our schools. I could go on and on, but Democrats are so out of touch with mainstream America that I don't ever see them appealing to a broad spectrum of the country.
The Leftists are a real savy bunch.
They thought the American citizen would like:
Nominating a criminal to represent their party and the nation in the White House, and this would draw support.
The media refusing to cover her criminal activity was another way to build trust and support.
Bringing hundreds of thousands of Syrian men (almost exclusively young military age men) and followers if Islam from the Middle East was going to attract votes.
They thought denigrating decent folks, Christians was a way to garner support.
They thought raising taxes would.
They thought racism against Whites would.
They thought promoting BLM and riots would be a winner.
They thought paying people to riot would endear people to them.
They thought the public watching their paid goons attack and brutally beat Conservatives would impress people favorably.
They thought more quotas to make sure minorities with lower qualifications beat out Whites with higher qualification would sell.
They thought backing illegal foreign nationals in our nation would win them citizen’s votes.
They thought allowing a very high presence of predator aliens would garner endearment from the families, friends, co-workers, or parents of dead, raped, robbed, injured for life citizens and children.
They thought that minorities who were losing their jobs to illegal aliens would back them.
They thought neighborhoods where gangs were out of control and inhabited by illegal aliens, would simply suffer the experience and back them.
They thought lying to the public through newsprint, speech, television show plots, would garner trusting followers.
They thought casting all but a very few Conservatives out of our education system at all levels, would endear the public to them.
If it was sinful, the Democrats backed it. Societal degeneration was on display. They thought folks would recognize this and buy in big-time.
I mean, who could find fault with this platform?
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, voters?
They should have that name (socialist), but then they can’t run candidates like Wal-Mart board member Hillary as their candidate...
I suspect you are right. But they will pay the price at the ballot box, provided Trump can stem the illegal tide.
they no that there is something wrong and they just don’t get it. I would be concerned with this aha moment. both sides don’t understand that it was the open corruption of Hillary that lost them. they don’t even mention the corruption with in the party. if they think they can fix the party with out going after those that are taking bribes to change public policy or to get government contracts they are in trouble.
The demoncrat party has always been anti-freedom and anti-American. Democracy itself is a totalitarian manifestation.
There is no Democratic Party. For 25 years there’s only been the Clintons. Even Obama is fallout from that. Now that Hillary finally failed for the last time, there’s just Rat chaos. Hillary, with Soros, is trying to formalize that chaos, keeping her claws on power as she’s dragged out the back door. That’s why all these riots are happening, they’re all staged agitprop.
But she’s lost her big political hammer. There isn’t any more “someday” for her, and everyone knows it. The liberal true believer snowflakes are melting because of it, but their leftist handlers, the sharks, smell Clinton blood in the water and are circling for the kill. Hillary’s in a LOT of danger right now, and she’s very sick. So she’s going to fight back viciously. In fact, I think she’s going to tear the Democrats to shreds once and for all. Because in the end she doesn’t care about anyone else but herself - at all.
Her idiot followers are about to find out what that really means.
——Her idiot followers are about to find out what that really means-—
When the proprietorial squeeze really begins, just the opposite will happen.
Since there are no life boats, they will grab that which floats. The individual life preservers will be offered to rat Hillary out. There will be horizon to horizon life preservers as they rat out Hillary and then each other.
It will all come out and it will be devastating
prosecutorial squeeze
In the whole screed, not a word about Hitlery’s crimes, corruption, theft of the primaries, lies, etc.
The entire Dem party, top to bottom, is morally vacant.
Identity politics at their best. The dems have divided all Americans in to angry little groups and fostered hatred between them all. You created this monster, enjoy it.
Jiffy Pop! Haven’t done one of those in ages.
Libs/proggies are stuck at an intellectual age of maybe 12 years old. Expect little real thought/logic/reason from them. Most are just koolaid-infused useful idiots. Thank our pubic school teachers for this.
That’s Robert B Reicccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhuh
Hilliary’s “super delegates” screwed over Sanders voters, and ‘democratic’ process. Now entire Rat party all WEE WEE’D UP.
wonder how many of the protesters voted?
You've got that right! If they were to ever get into power, it would look like early Soviet Russia ... there would be a massive bloodbath of the "working men and women" ... more commonly known as "kulaks" ...
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