By Dave Andrusko
The stories make for an interesting—and frightening– juxtaposition. The Democrats trying to find their way out of the electoral wilderness (while ever-so-gently acknowledging that the Obama presidency was a disaster for their party) and what Amber Phillips of the Washington Post discreetly described as “Republican town halls are getting very, very nasty.”
The latter refers to what the Post characterized as “a united, fired-up left”—where hundreds even thousands invade town hall meetings conducted by Republicans and engage in behavior eerily reminiscent of what took place at selected rallies held by then-candidate Donald Trump. Reporters, ever eager to bash Trump and be ahead of the curve, wonder whether this represents “the liberal answer to the tea party movement.”
As usual, the parallel is totally inept and poorly thought through. Tea party protests were of their own members of Congress who they felt had not sufficiently challenged President Obama. The mobs storming the Republican town halls are not angry Republicans but angry Democrats—and those much further to the Left—eager not to persuade but to disrupt.
The point is we are barely three weeks into a new administration and the drive to squelch speech is already in high gear—at Republican events and on campuses whenever someone who does not adhere to college orthodoxies is not allowed to talk.
Meanwhile Democrats are meeting in Baltimore to lick their wounds and to pretend there are no divisions in a party whose aging leadership comes from the East and West Coasts.
Writing at Hotair.com, John Sexton quoted from various stories that demonstrated both how little consensus there is about why they lost yet again in 2016 and how “progressives” are motivated by a burning desire to fight:
Politico had a report yesterday suggesting a similar divide over how to respond to Trump’s success. On one hand, Democrats in leadership seemed open to moderation and perhaps even working with the administration if the right circumstances presented themselves. But younger Democrats were more interested in obstructionism at every turn. A similar divide was reported Wednesday by the Washington Post. One of the sessions at the retreat was being led by a centrist think tank called Third Way. That didn’t sit well with progressive groups.
But of course, if you read those same stories you quickly realize Democratic leadership is not the least bit open to “moderation,” and if “Third Way” is “centrist,” it tells you just how far the party’s center of gravity has moved to the Left.
A prior story in POLITICO—“Obama’s party-building legacy splits Democrats: Party officials are having a painful discussion about the state and local losses that occurred on his watch”—is hugely revealing. The first two sentences explain the dilemma:
A painful Democratic rift over Barack Obama’s political legacy is finally bursting into the open.
For years, the former president’s popularity among Democrats stifled any public critiques of his stewardship of the party — a period in which the party suffered tremendous losses at the state and local levels.
Which brings us back to Amber Phillips’ story about the crowds attempting to intimidate Republican office holders. She put the trichotomy for Democrats this way:
Is this a movement that will give rise to new liberal leaders in a party that many believe desperately needs them? Or will moments like Thursday’s events pull the Democratic Party further to the left in a way that hurts its electoral chances? Will these people even vote in 2018, given they expressed their frustration after the election?
I’m betting a party that has not only lost Middle America but is now actively debating whether it even wants to try to win it back, is hurtling toward self-immolation.
