With their much-ballyhooed March on Washington in January followed by their ceaseless town hall protests around the country, Democrats thought for some time that the election and inauguration of Donald J. Trump had brought about some new renaissance in liberal politics. Buoyed by all of their support from the mainstream media and the still-fresh hangover of Bernie Sanders’ populist (and yet vastly overrated) campaign, they prepared themselves for the 1960s: Part II. The hippies were finally mounting a comeback, this time joined by black revolutionists, Mexican immigrants, and Rachel Maddow.
But the truth of the last seven months of the Trump presidency has not been kind to the liberal movement or the Democratic Party. Special election after special election has shown that neither progressive causes nor seething hatred of the president are enough to inspire voters to come out to the polls. In areas of the Midwest, the Democratic Party is seeing a continuation of what they saw last year – people unregistering themselves in droves. And while Republicans haven’t done what anyone could consider a great job of taking the reins on Capitol Hill, their opponents across the aisle can barely even articulate a political message.
With every passing week, it’s clearer than ever that Election Day 2016 wasn’t the nadir for the Democrats; it was the beginning of what could be a long, painful slide into absolute, total irrelevance.
The latest insult came on Thursday when, in attendance for a Trump rally, West Virginia’s Democrat governor, Jim Justice, stood up in front of thousands of people and officially jumped to the Republican Party.
“Like it or not, but the Democrats walked away from me,” Justice said to applause. “West Virginia, I can’t help you anymore by being a Democratic governor.”
Gov. Justice was hardly the picture of a solid-blue Democrat before last week, but his change in alliances is powerful symbolically, even if it means little for West Virginia politics. It puts the Republican Party in control of 34 governor’s mansions across the country – in 26 of those, they hold both the executive chair and the state legislature. On the other side, Democrats have total power in a measly six states. Put that together with the GOP’s complete stranglehold on Washington, D.C., and you see just how far out of whack the nation’s major TV stations and newspapers are from the average American. You see just how little use the average American has for liberal Democrats.
Democrats are in a tough, tough position. Their base wants them to go FULL LEFTY, which will undoubtedly mean the certain demise of the party. The leadership wants to move towards the center, which will deepen the “Bernie” split and leave millions of young liberals disaffected and disinterested. The only thing the party can agree on is its animosity towards Trump, and the signs thus far indicate that won’t be enough to win elections.
We could be witnessing the slow death of the Democratic Party. And it’s not at all clear that there’s anything the left can do to save itself.
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