Writing for Politico, David Freedlander looks at the schism within the Democratic Party. He describes the ideological purists versus the practical realists by putting names on leading people in each group.
Freedlander does a reasonable job of being fair to both sides, it seems to me as an outsider. I’m not certain the partisans would agree. We have the same sort of division among Republicans, except our old-style “purists” are very much on the defensive and in the minority these days, thanks to Trump and populism.
I don’t expect regular COTTonLINE readers to particularly empathize with either Democratic faction. However, their intra-party conflict will be a part of the national political dialog going forward. If we care about politics writ large, we need to know what the “other side” wrestles with when we’re not in the room. Check out this bit:
The Democratic Party started to go awry during the Obama years. His was a style and a rhetoric that let all Americans see themselves in the story he would tell about the country.
All of which left room open for someone who could put together a coherent story for people looking for someone to explain why, if all that inspiring stuff was true, everything seemed to be falling apart in the country.
Inconveniently for every Democrat in America right now, the person who did figure it out wasn’t a populist like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. It was Donald Trump.
Good luck, guys … you’ll need it. The faculty lounge bushwhah you’re peddling isn’t finding many heartland buyers.
