Up next for Obama: A looming Democratic divide

But as moderate Republicans become an ever rarer breed and more centrists find a home in the Democratic coalition, the party also must reconcile exactly who they are on a broader panoply of economic issues including Wall Street regulation and public employees.

This is the true challenge, and one that their narcissism and self-importance will ensure they never overcome. After Democrats chased out blue dogs and moderates en masse in 2004 and 2006, their party was of a laudable and compliant progressive purity, compared with the GOP, which still had (and still has) numerous moderates and others willing to pointlessly cross the aisle to work with a party that no longer has a bipartisan bloc sizable enough to find common ground with. Working with Democrats is no longer finding a bipartisan solution, it’s just plain working to pass the progressive agenda (at least more openly so than it always has been).

Purging worked well for Democrats politically because it made their voting bloc tight-knit and impenetrable to influence outside their self-imposed bubble, but most importantly, it made them consistent, which translated into electoral gains. Now that the Democratic Party has made sizable gains, the moderates have returned and they will shortly find themselves facing an identity crisis, as the progressives no longer hold complete sway over their rank-and-file party members. There will be struggle from within on which direction the party needs to go, whether it goes further to the left, or embraces a centrist populism to head the GOP off at the pass, as it were. If we’re going to capitalize, we need to purge when this identity crisis takes shape, as the minority party can’t afford to break ranks and side with the other team, especially when they’re warring over the identity of their own caucus.

mintycrys on January 18, 2013 at 5:03 PM