Democrats Decide to Just Go Ahead and Implode

[tyrannosaurus vex]

In true Democrat form, the Democratic Party has chosen this particular moment in history to have an existential crisis and turn inward to eat itself.

Meet the Justice Democrats, swooping in at just the wrong moment to save the American Left from any possibility of victory in 2018.

No doubt taking inspiration from the GOP's TEA Party conniption from 2010, the Justice Democrats are the spine the Democrats have never had, without all that messy connective tissue or muscular system that goes along with moving and doing things. Their website/manifesto declares war on "Corporate Democrats" who have "Allowed the Republicans to take control of most state legislatures" and whatever. Having convinced themselves that the only real antidote to American Fascism is a bout of hard-line socialism, they intend to attack unworthy and insufficiently true-believing Democrats in primaries across the country next year, and ... defeat them?

I'm all for taking a more progressive stance on issues. But this BernieBot Army is exactly the wrong way to do that. And, of course, since it is exactly the wrong way to go about making a political comeback, you can depend on the Democrats to pull it off -- flawlessly and spectacularly, in an inspiring display of self-immolation and utter collapse.

Seriously, though, maybe I'm being too pessimistic, but it's hard to see the chance of success in this. On the surface, it seems like all good intentions and warm fuzzy pep rallies. But as with any "goddammit you're moving too slow" political movement, it is sure to be overrun with increasingly fractious and myopic pet-project activists -- ultimately causing the disintegration of every last coalition in the Democratic Party's base. Their entire reason for existing is already because they're better/smarter/faster than Those Other Democrats, and only a fool would think that isn't going to translate downward to the membership of this group.

So yeah, go ahead and have fun with 2018, I guess. I'm just going to have a nightshade cocktail and sleep until this whole thing blows over.

[LMNO]

Can't we just get it over with and become a four party system? The Asshole Right, the GOP, the Dems, and the Fart-Huffers.


I mean, I'd probably be more politically aligned with the Huffers, but still.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Can't we just get it over with and become a four party system? The Asshole Right, the GOP, the Dems, and the Fart-Huffers.


I mean, I'd probably be more politically aligned with the Huffers, but still.

Well, clearly we are working on that. Give it until maybe 2022 or so.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Can't we just get it over with and become a four party system? The Asshole Right, the GOP, the Dems, and the Fart-Huffers.


I mean, I'd probably be more politically aligned with the Huffers, but still.

We need a Science party

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Can't we just get it over with and become a four party system? The Asshole Right, the GOP, the Dems, and the Fart-Huffers.


I mean, I'd probably be more politically aligned with the Huffers, but still.

We need a Science party

It's been tried.  Hilariously.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Can't we just get it over with and become a four party system? The Asshole Right, the GOP, the Dems, and the Fart-Huffers.


I mean, I'd probably be more politically aligned with the Huffers, but still.

It's funny as hell, really.  But someone has to represent Tumblr and the Berner FB page demographic, I suppose.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Can't we just get it over with and become a four party system? The Asshole Right, the GOP, the Dems, and the Fart-Huffers.


I mean, I'd probably be more politically aligned with the Huffers, but still.

We need a Science party

It's been tried.  Hilariously.

Then we need apolitical HIMEOBS.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Can't we just get it over with and become a four party system? The Asshole Right, the GOP, the Dems, and the Fart-Huffers.


I mean, I'd probably be more politically aligned with the Huffers, but still.

We need a Science party

It's been tried.  Hilariously.

Then we need apolitical HIMEOBS.

If it existed, that would be even better than what we have at the moment.

[Cain]

I look forward to when they see the results of roundly dismissing anyone who disagrees with you as a "shill" as an electoral strategy.

At least they haven't signed up to Tulsi Gabbard...yet.

[Cain]

On the plus side, this would provide endless material for /r/neoliberal

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This rhetoric that "The Democratic Party" has ever been a unified whole, or is doing anything in particular as an entity, let alone imploding, is silly.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

For one thing, people starting another party, even one with "Democrat" in the name, is by definition not something that is being done by the Democratic Party.

Sometimes I wonder whether most people actually understand what a political party even is.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I also feel the need to point out that despite being the oldest continuously-existing political party in the world, it has also almost never been anything BUT fractious, and certainly not at all in the last 100 years. The Republican party has been hooting and gnashing about how little Democrats agree with each other for as long as it has existed. It's literally their one big dead horse that they won't stop beating. The reason for this is that the Democratic party, ie. the people who register Democrat, spans very different populations with very different priorities. That liberal white people and conservative black people agree on enough to register in the same party to begin with is nothing short of astonishing. So the nonstop wailing about how the Democratic party is "fractionalized" or "imploding" is basically occurring as individual people notice something that has never not been the case in their lifetimes.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I also feel the need to point out that despite being the oldest continuously-existing political party in the world, it has also almost never been anything BUT fractious, and certainly not at all in the last 100 years. The Republican party has been hooting and gnashing about how little Democrats agree with each other for as long as it has existed. It's literally their one big dead horse that they won't stop beating. The reason for this is that the Democratic party, ie. the people who register Democrat, spans very different populations with very different priorities. That liberal white people and conservative black people agree on enough to register in the same party to begin with is nothing short of astonishing. So the nonstop wailing about how the Democratic party is "fractionalized" or "imploding" is basically occurring as individual people notice something that has never not been the case in their lifetimes.

Yeah, I know all of this. Of course it has been fractious and divided, like everything any group of humans do. I'm not commenting on that obvious fact. I'm commenting on the need to not only be fractured and exclusive but the need to more or less declare open war on the other half of the coalition as if they're a bigger enemy than the actual enemies. That it isn't enough to be a coalition (however fractious), that "coalitions" themselves are now insufficient for progress. There have always been differences of opinion and even strong disagreement under the Democratic roof, of course, and I'm not naive enough to think there hasn't been. It's the shift to a bridge-burning tone that I object to.

It's just another log on the fire that is currently consuming the republic. This anti-coalition, True-Believerism that says if you're not 100% on my side of all the lines, then you must be a mortal enemy. We are no longer interested in any kind of compromise. If you agree on everything but one issue, that one issue will become so important that it eclipses every other area where cooperation might have happened. It already ate up the GOP, but it took them 30 years to do it. The Democratic Party is probably going to take half that time and may not even survive. As naive as it would be to think that the Democrats have ever been homogeneous or entirely unified, it would be equally unobservant to think that those divisions are not growing deeper and faster in the last few years. I'm not talking about our differences, I'm talking about the rapidity with which they are expanding beyond any hope of reconciliation. The differences aren't new -- our complete abandonment of any hope of overcoming them is, or at least, we haven't seen it this bad for 150 years.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The left hates each other more than they hate the alt-right.  Dress it up all you like, doesn't change the facts.

The two main factions of the left are now even more rabid with respect to each other than they were during the primaries, because they are - like all humans - dumb as fuck and possessing the survival instincts of a dodo.  I am honest puzzled as to how we survived the interval between "falling out of the trees" and "inventing the shotgun".

This is why the right is shitting the place up with very little actual opposition..."All that evil requires is for good people to act like dumbasses."