2018-05-31

Full Blown Democrat Civil War Still One to Two Election Cycles Away

The Republican civil war started in 2008 with Ron Paul's campaign, picked up steam with the 2010 arrival of the Tea Party, continued into 2012 with Romney shutting Ron Paul out of a speaking role at the convention and ultimately culminated in Donald Trump winning the presidency on an anti-establishment platform.

The Democrats had power from 2008 through 2016, but as soon as there was a change election Bernie Sanders surged with an insurgent campaign. As had been done to Paul in the Republican party, the establishment of the party worked against Sanders. Now this mid-terms could be the Democrats "Tea Party" year, but a conclusion of the internal battle will come in the next 2 to 4 years once aging establishment Democrats retire and create an even bigger free-for-all opportunity for outsider politicians.

SanFran Chronicle: Democrats try to end civil war in California race that’s key to House control
“We have some truly talented and accomplished individuals running as first-time candidates,” said state party Chair Eric Bauman in announcing the agreement between Gil Cisneros and Andy Thorburn. “One of the biggest concerns ... is that the competition in the primaries has become so heated and divisive it impedes our ability to unite behind the person chosen by the voters to represent our party in the fall campaign.”

Translation: Fight the Republicans, not each other. And if you lose in the June 5 primary, smile and suck it up.

...That’s not all good news, though. Plenty of enthusiastic, well-funded Democratic candidates means those ambitious congressional wannabes all are competing against each other for what’s likely to be a single spot on the November ballot. If those various Democrats slice their part of the political pie into enough small pieces, it opens for way for a second Republican candidate to sneak into the top two and create a GOP-only November election.
Also in the next couple of election cycles, demographics will shift enough that the Republicans may cease to exist entirely, freeing Democrats from having to worry about vote splitting.

The Sacramento Bee: Reports of a Democratic party rift are greatly exaggerated
I didn’t write about the race, because my wife is Fletcher’s pollster. But one piece of Fletcher’s polling, printed here with the campaign’s permission, shows how phony the establishment vs. insurgent narrative was: Likely Democratic voters in the district had a highly positive view of the insurgent Sanders: 74 percent favorable, 15 percent unfavorable. But guess what?

Their view of the establishment doyenne Hillary Clinton was virtually identical: 72 percent favorable, 17 percent unfavorable.

If this was supposed to be a Democratic civil war, Democratic voters were non-combatants.

Certainly, there are policy differences among Democrats, and those will come out whenever they are again in a position to govern rather than resist. But Democrats are more ideologically homogenous than they have been historically. The southern conservatives are long gone, and there is no equivalent to the “New Democrats” of the Bill Clinton era. The party has been pulled to a populist consensus by Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and pushed there by the Trump plutocracy, which has showered riches on the wealthy and the corporate.
The split in the Democrat party, when it comes, will be more about identity. Instead of fighting on ideological issues, they will fight over who gets to rule.

From 2011: Republican party headed for civil war; Democrats to follow?
2013: GOP Civil War About to Explode
This will not be won by the establishment. The party establishment is going to be destroyed in the 2014 election as the GOP tears itself apart and swings to the right. This is good news for Democrats in 2014 and 2016, but bad news for 2020 and beyond because it means the GOP is likely to turn increasingly radical. That makes them more likely to win at what will eventually turn into musical chairs. Voters will be fed up with all of the establishment, and the small radicalized GOP will be able to reshape politics. That, or the GOP split up leads to a third party, and that third party would then have the inside track to winning the electoral lottery when voters next are fed and vote not for a candidate, but against the establishment.
Trump surprised by coming early in 2016, which is why he has little support in Congress. The wave of GOP retirements this year is the final phase of the political realignment.

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