This Women’s March thing is the Left’s tea party movement moment. If they start going after sitting Democrats in the primaries, it’s going to take hold. By defining how they expect Democrats to govern, they will offer a clear difference between them and the Republican Party.
The Democratic Party has been struggling with this since Barack Obama became the 44th President. Obama ran as a progressive outsider and, for the first 24 months, he certainly governed like one. But Obama got shellacked by a thing called the tea party movement in 2010. His response was to govern like a Clinton. He fired rhetorical shots at Republicans but he was re-elected because he was viewed by the real world as a center-left Democrat. (The ‘real’ world doesn’t really read political blogs.)
Barack Obama became what the progressives at San Diego Free Press call a “corporate Democrat”. He started following 1990’s era, Clintonian Third Way Liberalism. That was enough to defeat a “Chamber of Commerce Republican” in 2012, but Obama lost the House, Senate and 32 states during his tenure.
I’m a proud tea party conservative so I disagree with almost everything for which the Women’s March supporters advocate but I get it. They’re mad with the Democratic Party and they should be. Think of what happened to them last year. They nominated an experienced public servant with off-the-wall name recognition. She was deeply flawed but had eight years experience as a Senator and four as the Secretary of State. She was no longer Good Time Bill’s wife. Yet, Hillary Clinton lost to a reality television star.
Now think back to 2008. Republicans nominated a war hero, a maverick, a long-time Senator whom the media adored. He had gravitas. He was mostly aligned with the Republican platform. He was, in a word …”electable.” Yet, John McCain was trounced by a back bencher in the U.S. Senate who was a back bencher in a State Legislature six years before that. McCain lost to an amateur.
Do you remember how stunned we were were in 2008? Conservatives were more angry with the “Republican Establishment” than we were with President Obama. When Obama and the Democratic majority overreached with the stimulus package, a movement started. Our movement was simple. We believed in: Less government. Less spending. Less taxes. More freedom. Ours was a resistance movement, which today is a full-blown counter-revolution against the assault on constitutional government. We won…sort of.
They HATE our messenger. They absolutely hate him. They are as stunned as we were in 2008 and they actually see him as a THREAT against the sort of America in which they believe. Here is the big difference — mainstream, suburban women marched on different cities today. REPUBLICAN women…in yoga pants and Nike running shoes rather than peasant skirts and Birkenstocks. We stand to lose a core constituency if we rest on our laurels.
Here’s my message to the Women’s Marchers:
I think our ideas are better than yours, but if you want to have a passionate yet civil debate about this, I’m all for it…just clean up after yourselves (like tea party activists did and OWS protesters didn’t). Good luck liberals. I am happy to engage you in a battle of ideas.
Here is my message to conservatives or Republicans:
If you choose to ignore what is happening today, you are a political novice. If you choose to bolster their position by ridiculing them, you are an absolute idiot.
Comments 8
Author
Are Democrats really ready for the level of disruption that a true Tea Party of the Left would bring? This is, after all, the same political party that gloried in using its superdelegates to cut off Bernie Sanders’ path to the nomination, and that takes great pride in its top-down organizing structure. (Indeed, a major reason House Republicans are wary of holding health-care town-halls this year is knowing that Democrats can easily bus in out-of-district rent-a-crowds from their professional activist cadre.) The Democrats’ 2006 comeback, after all, was a classic D.C.-run operation, as Rahm Emanuel carefully cultivated Democratic candidates who were more in tune with swing voters in their districts than with the DailyKos Left, which wanted more Ned Lamonts. When the progressives finally captured the party’s leadership, they did so behind a man — Barack Obama — who owed much of his career to the favor of the Chicago machine and who was equally at ease raising a billion dollars from the party’s established donor class.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/444129/maybe-democrats-dont-really-want-their-own-tea-party
Brian,
The short answer to your question is “no.” The Democratic Party is not ready for the revolution that seems to be happening in the Party. Frankly, the country isn’t either. We are a divided enough nation without pushing another Party to its fringes.
One other comment re your original post: You list four items which the Tea Party and its members believe in. Donald Trump believes in only one of those (Lower taxes). Sometimes revolutions lead to the election of leaders who really have nothing in common with the revolutionaries.
Author
“Sometimes revolutions lead to the election of leaders who really have nothing in common with the revolutionaries.”
Yep. We agree…again
Brian,
“Yep. We agree…again” More often than either of us would ever admit to. 🙂
Author
The Sane Democratic Caucus missed an opportunity yesterday to #makeDNCrelevantagain , HQ.
Joe Manchin, Collin Peterson, Dan Lipinksi and Jim Costa should have found a way to get a photo opp with President Trump and the Union leaders
Brian,
Unfortunately, we are running out of sane Democrats too. The sad fact is that on a political scale of 1 -10, most Americans would consider themselves somewhere between 3-7 and mostly 4, 5 or 6. Our elected officials are almost exclusively 1, 2 or 9, 10.
I am generally very optimistic about our future especially when it comes to politics, but lately I find myself more cynical and pessimistic than ever. Hopefully, President Trump, because of his lack of ideology, will be a successful President and we can move away from what can only be called a near-theocracy on both the right and the left. Of course I have my doubts that this will happen, but whatever hope I have left is pushing in that direction.
Author
“Hopefully, President Trump, because of his lack of ideology, will be a successful President and we can move away from what can only be called a near-theocracy on both the right and the left. ”
I’m an unapologetic priest in that theocracy but I agree that a “malleable” President COULD serve all of us well
“Of course I have my doubts that this will happen, but whatever hope I have left is pushing in that direction.”
I’m a believer so I gotta stay optimistic. Remember, we agree more often than not.
“I’m an unapologetic priest in that theocracy…”
I too have very strong beliefs but as arrogant as I may seem at time, I am not ready to simply dismiss the opinions of those who disagree with me.