You cannot make these things up, digital family: pic.twitter.com/7NZaaZGWak
— Paul Elliott Johnson (@RhetoricPJ) March 21, 2018
Another reminder: We Democrats just have to work harder at organizing, because we lack that lemming instinct which makes astroturfing the GOP so easy and profitable. Political scientist David A. Hopkins, “Why The “Liberal Tea Party” Doesn’t Exist (And Why Some People Think It Does)”:
… Matt Grossmann and I explained in Asymmetric Politics why the Democrats are much less vulnerable to ideological purification campaigns than Republicans are, and we summarized our argument in this piece for Vox Polyarchy. Part of the story is that the American left simply lacks much of the institutional infrastructure that promoted and sustained the Tea Party rebellion on the right, such as powerful ideologically-driven media sources, interest groups, and financial donors. (The number of politically active leftist billionaires is….not large.) But it’s also true that many Democratic voters simply don’t think of politics in ideological terms or prize doctrinal fidelity over other qualities—such as perceived electability, group identity, or ability to deliver concrete policy achievements—when making their choice of candidate.
So if there isn’t much evidence of a “liberal Tea Party,” why is anybody talking about it? One reason is that the assumption of party symmetry is deeply entrenched in the minds of many political observers, who expect any trends on one partisan side to inevitably appear in comparable form on the other. Another is the well-documented tendency of media coverage to frame stories in ways that emphasize conflict, or at least the possibility of conflict (“if it bleeds, it leads”)… A third is that Republicans, facing a poor electoral climate this year, have adopted the talking point that their fortunes will be salvaged by a raft of extremist opponents nominated by far-left Democratic primary electorates.
But there’s something else at work here as well. Purist leftism, to the extent it exists in America, is especially concentrated in the circles—metropolitan, professional, well-educated, highly internet-active—in which many media members themselves travel…
Put simply, the online left is not representative of the Democratic Party. Visitors to local Democratic caucus or committee meetings in most parts of America will find that the public employees, union officials, trial lawyers, nonprofit association administrators, and African-American church ladies who actually constitute the party’s activist backbone are, by and large, neither preoccupied with ideological purity nor in a state of rebellion against its current leadership. And though the election of Donald Trump has surely angered and energized the Democratic base, there’s no particular reason to think that anti-Trump sentiment will lead to an internal ideological transformation….
Which, again: This has been true of the Democratic Party, and its GOP counterpart, at least back to the days of Finley Peter Dunne ragging on the McKinley administration’s kleptocrats. Dems are better at compromising than at enforcing ‘party discipline’… which is why, among so many other reasons, we’re not Republicans!
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