I’m not really convinced that wanting purity is necessarily the problem. In fact I would argue that the Democratic will need the energy of an activist progressive left if it is to win, even if the candidate who represents the party ends up being someone better known as a centrist or a pragmatist. The problem I’ve seen to date with the more outspoken progressives isn’t their passion for issues; it’s their tactics. They have to agree to be part of the team, even if they can’t get everything they want from Pelosi. By all means, they’re free to charge hard until the floor debate ends, but once it ends, they have to agree to keep whatever squabbling they do largely in-house.
On the flip side, the same is true for the party leadership and the moderates. I’ve called out The Squad and some others like Rep. Pocan for their twitter wars, but Nancy Pelosi also probably erred when she gave a fairly smug assessment of some of her colleagues in an interview with the NY Times (?). They both have to agree to play by the same rules in maintaining their coalition and they have to accept there may be days when they might not appreciate all coalition members, but they can never lose sight of what’s most important: beating Donald Trump.
I think this is most likely what happened. Most of the hardcore Sanders supporters, AFAIK, either voted for Clinton, and most of the rest either stayed home or voted for Jill Green. Maybe 1-3% of Sanders supporters voted for Trump either out of spite towards Clinton personally or because they’re so angry at the system that they’ve become voters who are perpetually floating from one fringe candidate to the next, looking for a home.
Unfortunately, the last election was close enough that embittered Bernie voters could have made the difference. Obviously, Clinton did not help herself, so it’s certainly far from their fault, but in a vote where every ballot counts, it’s worth paying attention to the hairline fractures in the coalition.
What’s more concerning as we move into the social media era is that fringe groups – and maybe we don’t even have to call the “fringe”, just passionate – can form very strong associations with very hardened attitudes. They can form virtual tribes within tribes. With social media and with modern mass communication, they can encourage each other to engage in behavior that provides them with a sense of self-satisfaction (i.e. “Screw the machine”) and the group might be impervious, even spiteful, to calls to join a broader coalition.
And of course they will be encouraged in this by operatives for groups who want to see Trump remain in office.
These pro-GOP/Kremlin/other-foreign-adversary groups are greatly aided in their work by human psychology. There are few more popular positions to take than “you can’t fool me!” And it will be suggested that Those Establishment Democrats are trying to fool you, but you’re too smart for that, aren’t you? You’re not going to play their game by actually voting for a Democrat, are you???
This message will have great appeal to some who think of themselves as being on the left, and being opponents of Trump. And I’m not sure how they can be inoculated against it. That stance of being anti-Establishment is so seductive, that they may not realize how thoroughly they’re being manipulated by the right.
Golly, if only the Dems could possibly hire some trolls to fuck with Republican divisions but alas, they are far too pure of spirit.
It is time for Dems to quit crying like babies about Russian interference. Email leaks should obviously be avoided, the feds should investigate and social media companies should be encouraged to shut down foreign troll farms but you should get a grip on the fact that this is reality moving forward and Americans can easily do the same thing.
Well, the task of doing ‘the same thing’ is complicated by the fact that getting white supremacists (for example) to turn on each other requires an ability to get into the mindset of a white supremacist. And there aren’t natural demographic groups to pit one against the other: do you try to get the Proud Boys to suspect that the Prosperity Gospel people are secretly against them? They probably are against each other…but they’re united in wanting to make sure the Supreme Court puts all them gays and womens and Muslims back in their proper place. That’s a tough unity to dissolve.
At any rate, no crying is required. Just vigilance.
Sorry, that is super dumb. The Russians didn’t exploit schisms between exotic flavors of super lefties. They exploited differences between hard left and center left. White middle of the road and black middle of the road. Fiscal lefties and social lefties.
The Republican vote is not entirely composed of White Supremacists. There are broader fault lines to attack.
No they are most definitely not and to suggest otherwise implies a lack of paying attention to the 2016 Republican primary where some Democrats and most of the pro-liberal media voted for Trump and provided orders of magnitude more help than the Russians in order to cause mischief. You like what you got?
Definitely not to pure.
Some Democrats voted for Trump in the primary to cause chaos.
Pro liberal media promoted Trump in the primary to cause chaos.
The value of the publicity was orders of magnitude greater than a few Russian memes.
Lol. Well then, why should I trust your memory of the pro-liberal media? I have a strong feeling you don’t follow liberal media, you follow reports on it.
Thanks for posting the link! I agree it is spot on about how the purity police will help reelect DJT if they get their way. I found both of these to be particularly spot on:
It was impossible not to cover Trump - he was the “Man Bites Dog” headliner candidate. He’s even more so now that he has a much larger stage and louder microphone, which is one of the challenges facing his challengers and critics.
On a regular basis? None really. I listen to a bit of talk radio once or twice a month. Maybe some Thomas Sowell stuff. Watch a tiny bit of fox. Probably less than 2 hrs a month of that. Why do you ask?