How Democrats Can heal the Schism in Their Party

[Mr. Smith]

No, Hillary would've had a way around Rubio and Kasich, who themselves are lot more dependent on their image being good than either Hillary or Trump. And despite what you say about minorities and all not liking her, that Trump base would revolt hard against Kasich or Rubio or Cruz.

You can say "but muh suburbs are back", but as demonstrated by 2012, that's not enough.

No, Trump and Trump alone.

On the flip side, I don't think Webb or O'Malley or Sanders would've been able to just wall off Trump and slowly turn him on himself. either, and as the primary demonstrated, Bernie falls apart when he gets really angry or flustered, and unlike Trump, he isn't built partially by being likably unlikable.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

This is overblown the Republican had so many schism's over the past years. I remember several articles of the coming 'GOP civil war' that never came the party was unified against Obama and that was that mattered. The Dem party under Bush had the same divisions progs vs. blue dogs, SoCons vs. Libs that was kept together by their hatred of Bush.

Both Parties curently have schisms, but the GOP isn't one that gonna be easily reconciled the way the schism in the Democratic Party can. Democrats can solve their schism by moving to the left. The GOP have a much bigger problem trying to reconcile right wing nationalist populism with Reaganite conservatism. These two visions are usually in direct conflict with one another.

And again, this dynamic wouldn't have presented itself without Trump, who was a pseudo-third party candidate. So, if Trump had lost the primary while smearing his opponent nominee with conspiracy theories and calling the whole system 'rigged', how would the GOP have reconciled that?

Their base would've been #anybodybutHillary.

I can't think of a Third Party run that hurt a political Party which had already been on the political outs of the WH for 8 years.

1836

That was an unusual strategy by the Whig party, and not a 3rd party run.

[Technocracy Timmy]

This is overblown the Republican had so many schism's over the past years. I remember several articles of the coming 'GOP civil war' that never came the party was unified against Obama and that was that mattered. The Dem party under Bush had the same divisions progs vs. blue dogs, SoCons vs. Libs that was kept together by their hatred of Bush.

Both Parties curently have schisms, but the GOP isn't one that gonna be easily reconciled the way the schism in the Democratic Party can. Democrats can solve their schism by moving to the left. The GOP have a much bigger problem trying to reconcile right wing nationalist populism with Reaganite conservatism. These two visions are usually in direct conflict with one another.

And again, this dynamic wouldn't have presented itself without Trump, who was a pseudo-third party candidate. So, if Trump had lost the primary while smearing his opponent nominee with conspiracy theories and calling the whole system 'rigged', how would the GOP have reconciled that?

Their base would've been #anybodybutHillary.

I can't think of a Third Party run that hurt a political Party which had already been on the political outs of the WH for 8 years.

1836

That's a single event from a freakishly long time ago (by contemporary American standards). Plus the Whigs had just formed as a result of the National Republican Party falling out and (as jfern noted) was a weird strategy they pursued on their own volition.

[uti2]

This is overblown the Republican had so many schism's over the past years. I remember several articles of the coming 'GOP civil war' that never came the party was unified against Obama and that was that mattered. The Dem party under Bush had the same divisions progs vs. blue dogs, SoCons vs. Libs that was kept together by their hatred of Bush.

Both Parties curently have schisms, but the GOP isn't one that gonna be easily reconciled the way the schism in the Democratic Party can. Democrats can solve their schism by moving to the left. The GOP have a much bigger problem trying to reconcile right wing nationalist populism with Reaganite conservatism. These two visions are usually in direct conflict with one another.

And again, this dynamic wouldn't have presented itself without Trump, who was a pseudo-third party candidate. So, if Trump had lost the primary while smearing his opponent nominee with conspiracy theories and calling the whole system 'rigged', how would the GOP have reconciled that?

Their base would've been #anybodybutHillary.

I can't think of a Third Party run that hurt a political Party which had already been on the political outs of the WH for 8 years.

1836

That's a single event from a freakishly long time ago (by contemporary American standards). Plus the Whigs had just formed as a result of the National Republican Party falling out and (as jfern noted) was a weird strategy they pursued on their own volition.

I mean if you're suggesting that the GOP divisions were so huge and that they were really larger than the democratic divisions, then the parallel would be 1836. It's an example of what can happen in that scenario. The multiple nominees also reflected on many of the internal divisions presented in the party.

[Technocracy Timmy]

I'll just stop. Arguing about hypotheticals of the past is ultimately a pointless endeavor since they cannot and will never play themselves out. 2016 is in the history books and we can only speculate with what has already happened to guide us to the future.

[uti2]

If Trump was ballsy enough to run third party in the event that he doesn't get the nom in 2016 then I don't see why Sanders wouldn't have also ran third party as well. The dislike of the GOP leadership by the base isn't that far off from the progressive wing's dislike of Clinton.

Sanders and Clinton clearly didn't see eye to eye or get along in the aftermath of the primaries.

Sanders had already penned a letter rationalizing his support for Clinton in the 90s despite disagreeing with him. Sanders also said he would endorse the Democratic nominee from the start, unlike Trump, who made no such assurances. Sanders also has a record of snubbing Nader and the Green Party.

Also, even in a 4 way race, as in 1912, the primary beneficiary would be the Center-Left, as they represent the plurality faction of the electorate.

It was reported in 2015 that Sanders hadn't returned Nader's phone calls in over 15 years, obviously we can see how he felt about him and his movement.

[Coraxion]

Right, the party that actively fights against the Bill of Rights is the civil rights party.

Republicans sure seem to despise freedom of religion, freedom of press, and freedom of assembly. The first is obvious, Republicans have long despised the free press but they've taken it to an unprecedented level these last two years or so, and they've vilified peaceful protesters as thugs, terrorists, and rioters.

[TheSaint250]

Right, the party that actively fights against the Bill of Rights is the civil rights party.

Republicans sure seem to despise freedom of religion, freedom of press, and freedom of assembly. The first is obvious, Republicans have long despised the free press but they've taken it to an unprecedented level these last two years or so, and they've vilified peaceful protesters as thugs, terrorists, and rioters.

There's a difference between despising the free press and saying that the press is against you

And many protests are violent.

Also lol at Republicans hating religious freedom

[Tancred]

Big tent parties will always have schisms within them, it's more a question of whether or not those schisms are things the partisans are willing to overlook for the sake of their mutual shared interest or whether they see the internal civil war as a more pressing concern. It turns out most activists prefer a party based on some philosophical views rather than an irrational preference for the letters D or R. So that tension will almost always be there somewhere.

True. Both parties are big tent parties with factions. If we had a multi-party system we would have a greater number of viable parties that better reflected some of these factions. For example the Republicans would probably divide into a business conservative party, a libertarian party and a nationalist party (Trump). The Democrats could be broken up into a centrist party, a Green party and a social democratic party (Sanders). A Christian Democratic party for socially conservative/economically liberal voters would likely include both ex-Democrats and ex-Republicans.

Much of the division between Democrats seems to revolve around bad blood after the contentious 2016 primary between Clinton and Sanders even though there was not as much ideological difference between the two camps as one might think. The biggest differences between them were based on how much they trusted establishment institutions with Clinton supporters having more faith in working within the system while Sanders supporters were more likely to see the system as rigged and corrupt.

[AtorBoltox]

Right, the party that actively fights against the Bill of Rights is the civil rights party.

Republicans sure seem to despise freedom of religion, freedom of press, and freedom of assembly. The first is obvious, Republicans have long despised the free press but they've taken it to an unprecedented level these last two years or so, and they've vilified peaceful protesters as thugs, terrorists, and rioters.

There's a difference between despising the free press and saying that the press is against you

And many protests are violent.

Also lol at Republicans hating religious freedom

Theocracy ≠ religious freedom

[136or142]

It's not "identity politics". It's civil rights. If anyone is playing identity politics, it's the GOP.

"Identity politics" exists because those who discriminate against people on an irrational basis do so on the basis of some form of identity, whether it's because the person they're discriminating against is a visible minority, a woman or a member of the LGBTQ community.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I honestly can't think of any politician or political movement that doesn't involve identity politics - broad Marxist appeals to class, the civic liberal tradition dominant in America since the founders, all nationalist thought, agrarian populism and even simple appeals to common humanity all rely on people forging political alliances with other individuals on the basis that they have similar problems. In that respect, we cannot blame the simple fact that the democrats peddle identity politics, because so do their opponents. However as somebody else noted, the issue is the democrats failed to be successful with their brand of identity politics.

I think one of the biggest problems is the democrats like to bifurcate their coalition far too much. The GOP's message is crafted by a mixture of dimwits and sociopaths, but the common identity it appeals to is simple: the American people, under attack by a consortium of nefarious forces. You may say "But via subtext is that the GOP were clearly appealing to a narrow white Christian male demographic!". But that's the thing: the GOP leaves it in the subtext. That's just how political messaging works. A lot of urban Great Society programs were clearly aimed at African Americans, but LBJ didn't announce a War on Black Poverty. Likewise, Reagan's denunciations of welfare queens was widely considered a dogwhistle, but he also left the radicalised aspect of such rhetoric in the subtext. In 2016, the democrats forgot about subtext. Issues were sorted into helpful boxes (ah, African Americans are interested in police reform, Hispanics in immigration, middle class suburban dwellers in Hillary's experience, young women in abortion etc). The democratic coalition was less of merging together of people for some great cause, more of a grabbag of disparate strands calculated to reach a magic 270. The rise in data journalism and degeneration of political journalism compounded these problems. It is not hard to see why somebody watching CNN or any other 24 hour news dross would come away with a perfect understanding of the democrats strategy for getting into office and their expected numbers with each race and educated level, and literally nothing about what she planned to do once in office. And that comes back to the subtext problem: for a while, democrats have been shedding white uneducated voters. This in itself is not fatal, but for no reason at all, the Democrats decided to elevate this to text in 2016, by proudly stating they were an irrelevant part of the coalition. Because the adjective "uneducated" comes across as an insult, and it was normally made in such smug terms anyway; it's no real wonder why the group abandoned the democrats en mass, either to Abstention or to Trump's maw. Even republicans don't literally say "who cares about black voters anyway lol!"

Worse, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how low-turnout voters work. If you are interested in abortion, you almost certainly will turnout because normally the opponent will irritate and scare you so much you'll vote your side by default. Look at the behaviour of the pro-life movement in 2016, which swing behind possibly the least religious man to ever receive the republican nomination. All they needed was the deal that trump would commit to their cause, and they showed up in great numbers. That's not to say that democrats need to abandon or even moderate their position on abortion, just awknowledge that it is a background issue for most voters who are more interested in their own day to day lives. If you are an activist, you will join the dots. But by and large, a low turnout or swing voter is not politically conscience whatever their identity, and are more interested in more kitchen table issues than "issues". The fall in black turnout despite the democratic focus on BLM is not really discussed enough. It seems to me that Denocrats clearly thought the issue was some whizz bang technique to keep turnout at Obama levels, but clearly BLM (a movement I sympathise with) and its reforms were not seen as such by black voters, especially in rural areas. (Talking of Obama, the way he was treated by the Hillary campaign - as a mere gotv force in black areas, really highlights the problem in democrats viewing their base as too fragmented. The great skill of Obama is that he was able to talk past the fragments and work the democratic base into a common identity, which was lost in 2016 in the data onslaught).

[Chief Justice Keef]

I think people are getting identity politics wrong. I don't hate identity politics, I just think the way Democrats have appealed to identity is incredibly superficial and dumb. The way Democrats use identity politics doesn't actually build solidarity around social groups, but Republicans are incredibly effective at employing white identity politics and soft ethno-nationalism to rally social groups together into a voting base, no matter how horrible and virulent their politics are.

Secondly, I think the article in the OP really nails it when it describes how race plays a bigger role in suburban communities rather than rural communities. I come from a suburban background and the skepticism surrounding inner cities and minorities is incredibly prevalent.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I honestly can't think of any politician or political movement that doesn't involve identity politics - broad Marxist appeals to class, the civic liberal tradition dominant in America since the founders, all nationalist thought, agrarian populism and even simple appeals to common humanity all rely on people forging political alliances with other individuals on the basis that they have similar problems. In that respect, we cannot blame the simple fact that the democrats peddle identity politics, because so do their opponents. However as somebody else noted, the issue is the democrats failed to be successful with their brand of identity politics.

I think one of the biggest problems is the democrats like to bifurcate their coalition far too much. The GOP's message is crafted by a mixture of dimwits and sociopaths, but the common identity it appeals to is simple: the American people, under attack by a consortium of nefarious forces. You may say "But via subtext is that the GOP were clearly appealing to a narrow white Christian male demographic!". But that's the thing: the GOP leaves it in the subtext. That's just how political messaging works. A lot of urban Great Society programs were clearly aimed at African Americans, but LBJ didn't announce a War on Black Poverty. Likewise, Reagan's denunciations of welfare queens was widely considered a dogwhistle, but he also left the radicalised aspect of such rhetoric in the subtext. In 2016, the democrats forgot about subtext. Issues were sorted into helpful boxes (ah, African Americans are interested in police reform, Hispanics in immigration, middle class suburban dwellers in Hillary's experience, young women in abortion etc). The democratic coalition was less of merging together of people for some great cause, more of a grabbag of disparate strands calculated to reach a magic 270. The rise in data journalism and degeneration of political journalism compounded these problems. It is not hard to see why somebody watching CNN or any other 24 hour news dross would come away with a perfect understanding of the democrats strategy for getting into office and their expected numbers with each race and educated level, and literally nothing about what she planned to do once in office. And that comes back to the subtext problem: for a while, democrats have been shedding white uneducated voters. This in itself is not fatal, but for no reason at all, the Democrats decided to elevate this to text in 2016, by proudly stating they were an irrelevant part of the coalition. Because the adjective "uneducated" comes across as an insult, and it was normally made in such smug terms anyway; it's no real wonder why the group abandoned the democrats en mass, either to Abstention or to Trump's maw. Even republicans don't literally say "who cares about black voters anyway lol!"

Worse, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how low-turnout voters work. If you are interested in abortion, you almost certainly will turnout because normally the opponent will irritate and scare you so much you'll vote your side by default. Look at the behaviour of the pro-life movement in 2016, which swing behind possibly the least religious man to ever receive the republican nomination. All they needed was the deal that trump would commit to their cause, and they showed up in great numbers. That's not to say that democrats need to abandon or even moderate their position on abortion, just awknowledge that it is a background issue for most voters who are more interested in their own day to day lives. If you are an activist, you will join the dots. But by and large, a low turnout or swing voter is not politically conscience whatever their identity, and are more interested in more kitchen table issues than "issues". The fall in black turnout despite the democratic focus on BLM is not really discussed enough. It seems to me that Denocrats clearly thought the issue was some whizz bang technique to keep turnout at Obama levels, but clearly BLM (a movement I sympathise with) and its reforms were not seen as such by black voters, especially in rural areas. (Talking of Obama, the way he was treated by the Hillary campaign - as a mere gotv force in black areas, really highlights the problem in democrats viewing their base as too fragmented. The great skill of Obama is that he was able to talk past the fragments and work the democratic base into a common identity, which was lost in 2016 in the data onslaught).

Well. Said.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I'd also add to CrabCake's excellent and thorough post that many of us - certainly myself! - mistook Trump's angry, bellicose, and entirely incoherent and self-contradictory rhetoric for actual weaknesses. Because we forgot that most people - certainly most of the people who aren't already reliable partisans in their voting habits - are not political junkies, and that most reliable Republican partisans' non-negotiables in a candidate are emotionally hot-button, amygdala-stimulating issues like immigration, abortion, "law and order", "radical Islam", and having an uncompromising, abrasive, slash-and-burn approach to dealing with the liberal media (TM) or Cultural Marxists or whoever - and that if anything (and opinion polls have showed this), Republican voters are a lot more malleable on (if not outright supportive of) things that are heresy to the Republican elite  like raising taxes on rich people, opposing free trade agreements, staunchly supporting Social Security and Medicare, etc. In that respect, many Republican voters are very similar to the proverbial "low-information swing voter" (particularly - but not exclusively, in fact - white voters of this description).

Also note that Trump's unique (for a Republican presidential nominee, at least) appeal to white nationalists/supremacists, as disgusting and alarming as that was/is, demonstrated his candidacy's resonance among a far broader, more mainstream population of Americans who not only think that America (and the world) is on the wrong track due to all of the various effects of globalization in terms of exponentially rapid and bewildering economic, demographic, and cultural change, but that they specifically (and their children and grandchildren) are going to be worse off for it. To add insult to injury, these people are nothing if not convinced that the same polite society-elites in both parties who have benefited from and openly championed the aforementioned changes have unbridled contempt and disdain for them, the "salt of the earth" people of the USA. And you know what? Those suspicions are more correct than many of us would like to admit.

To demonstrate the point further, Donald Trump's appeal among evangelicals really started and was strongest among lower-status, disaffected, yet still "aspirational" individuals who listened to sermons by Prosperity Gospel preachers and were attracted to "Positive Thinking" in general (Note that Trump was a very prominent disciple - pun intended - of Norman Vincent Peale). The same kind of person who listens to televangelists finds Donald Trump appealing, or is at least more likely to than others, IMO. Again, low-information swing voters and ordinary (non-elite, non-donor) Republicans.

It didn't help that Hillary Clinton was the Democratic nominee, because she not only has universal name recognition (like Trump) but crucially, is less-than-popular among many if not most of those same low-information voters that I mentioned (who include a lot of Democrats and Independents, as we saw in the primaries - let alone, the vast majority of Republican voters, but ESPECIALLY Republican voters in states and areas that aren't reliably Democratic already). And obviously the fact that she was part of the same dreaded Establishment that Trump so effectively took down in the Republican primaries - combined with the socialist gadfly who reminds people of Larry David doing much better against the universally-supported-by-the-Democratic-power-players Hillary Clinton than he really should have in the Democratic primaries (look at Michigan) - should have been a major red flag. Ugh.