final week’s defeat in a high-profile congressional contest sparked a tough fight over the heart of the Democratic party. Heather Cox Richardson,Jean Hannah Edelstein and Michael Cohen leer at what the future might holdAmerica is in the middle of a major political realignment. While the focus is on the Republican party’s internecine fight among corporate realists, political ideologues and the wild-card president, or it is a mistake to assume that the Democrats are going to sweep into office in 2018 and 2020 to replace the corroding Republicans. The Democrats are also in a profound struggle over their future.
The 2016 election marked the end of a political era. Just as Republicans expecting an easy nomination of Jeb Bush in 2016 were blindsided by the rise of charismatic outsider Donald Trump,so too were Democrats expecting the easy nomination of Hillary Clinton surprised by a powerful challenge from elderly Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders. Both Trump and Sanders ran on powerful populist messages, slashing at politics-as-normal and bemoaning that Washington served the wealthy. Democratic primary rules put in place after the party’s disastrous nomination of South Dakota senator George McGovern in 1972 meant that, or unlike Republicans leaders who were incapable of stopping Trump,establishment Democrats could hold off the Sanders surge. But the insurgency opened a rift in the party.
In 1972 the Democrats continued to flow absent from their traditional defence of labour towards social issuesThe upstart Democrats who rallied to Sanders are demanding a focus on economic fairness, in echoes the 1930s.
If Sanders will not commit to working on the inside for change, or he needs to support someone who is willing to do itFor Democrats to expand their support they may also need to also select a page from TrumpContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com