Democratic Party Afraid To Emulate Tea Party Success: Move, Or Get Out Of The Way

You might think that a political party which stands accused of one of the most embarrassing and momentous political defeats in American history, one which was almost entirely due to a series of well-aimed large-caliber shotgun blasts at not just one foot, but all bodily appendages, would be prepared to carry out some serious introspection and to check in for an overhaul at the polity’s nearest service station. You would be wrong. Your political instincts and sensibility do not apply to the Democratic Party, which follows a suicidal logic all its own.

The Wall Street Journal was kind enough to inform us that in recent days, as the ‘battle’ for the Chair of the Democratic National Committee has heated up, pitting Keith Ellison—a man favored by the ‘Bernie Sander wing’ of the party–against the ‘bank-friendly’ Tom Perez, the favored candidate of the same folks who led the Democratic Party to the 2016 Nineth November Massacree, are determined to turn this nation’s politics into Groundhog Day:

“Is the Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren wing of the party going to push us too far to the left?” asked former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who also served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “Only if they start going after incumbent moderate Democrats in primaries like the Tea Party did.”

Ah, yes, the Fear of the Land of Too Far Left, brought to you by the DNC Who Cried Wolf. Ah, yes, the Terrible Tea Party, whose ‘takeover’ of the Republican Party now stands revealed as a catastrophic failure: full control of the US House of Representatives, the US Senate, and the Oval Office. With misfortunes like this, success does seem less attractive. The wise learn from their foes; the fool merely from himself. The Republican and Tea Party–a composite moniker which seems rather more appropriate given the nature of the entity the Democratic Party confronts–is not possessed of political genius; it merely abides by a crystalline commonsense wholly appropriate to electoral democracies: to govern, to assume power, you need to be voted into office; and to stay there, you must continue to listen to those who put you there. This political axiom is incomprehensible to the Democratic Party, which not content with having dismantled the organized ‘base’ that elected a black man with a Muslim middle name to the White House, intends to continue its ride over the beckoning cliffs. We would be wise to not follow.

The Democratic Party is not a political party; it is a retirement home for the politically incompetent, dedicated to nothing more than servicing the financial fortunes of a motley crew of boring policy wonks, Chelsbillary Clinton sycophants, and your garden variety neoliberal. It shrinks from conflict, the business of politics; it is afraid to govern, to take over the reigns of government. What is it doing, taking up space on the political stage? Perhaps insurance companies and banks and corporate law firms do not pay as much as they do. This trough must be deeper than we thought, bidding the DNC’s snouts to push just a bit further.