John Boehner and Mitch McConnell worked with the right-wing extremist Tea Party and diluted it into becoming a bunch of normal conservatives. The Democrats do not wish to do the same with Justice Democrats and are instead pulling it more towards socialism.
I see the transition of the GOP as just the opposite. Boehner and McConnell gave so much slack to the uninformed and racist TEA party that its platform and ideology now defines the party. It was their capitulation to the ridiculous that eventually gave us Trump, but their loss in ’08 demonstrated that the non-voting Independents is largely progressive and only waiting for a candidate they can justify voting for. Those were the voters who, once they became familiar with Bernie, would have defeated the best known Democrat in history had the primary not been predetermined.
Does anyone actually believe the Republican party leadership, many of whom previously touted their ability to work “across the aisle”, jumped on the birther bandwagon because they believed Obama was born in Kenya? Or that Sarah Palen was a serious choice for VP? Remember that it was the party that forced her on McCain in response to how well she polled with the radical fringe right, then known as the TEA Party.
Non-voters have been the largest block in America since the ’90s and many arguments have been generated over which way the majority of them lean. The DNC sorted that out by running the first black candidate with any actual chance of winning, which was the real motivation that drove the GOP in ’08. Every cockroach on the right came out of the woodwork and shook off their Budweiser stupor to oppose the Kenyan candidate who, you have to admit, ran a pretty far left campaign even if he didn’t hold true to his platform upon winning.
The entire objective of the neoliberal DNC, in the absence of any leadership from Obama, has been to return progressives to their non-status in the party, but, much like the GOP discovered, some Genies don’t go willingly back into their bottles. Trump would be enraged at the thought, but the GOP is still the party of the racist and ignorant nationalist Palen, not his. Progressives, like the TEA Party, hold the key to winning by adding voters to the Dem base and Justice Democrats, rightly, don’t believe the neoliberal left has anything of value to right our sinking ship, especially with climate change bearing down on us like a summer storm.
This is not the time to worry about “bringing out the base”, as Trump is doing that for Democrats every time he tweets. It’s a good time to re-organize the party more in line with its roots in FDR’s New Deal, which is all Bernie and AOC are advocating, even if that is seen as radical in Sarah Palen’s America.
