A Rip In the Big Tent

I was listening to This American Life, and they were talking about the Democratic Party, post the election of Donald Trump. The basic topic was the big split in the party that had opened up recently. What kind of surprised me was that no-one ever simply came out and said that the Democrats were still caught in re-litigating the Sanders-Clinton primary, with neither side either conceding that some or another circumstance had shown the strength of the other side, nor being willing to actively reach out to the other with an olive branch.

While the Republicans were effectively, if grudgingly, lauded for their decision to all come together around their opposition to President Obama after his election in 2008, it was also recognized that the Democrats couldn't manage to simply be the party of Opposing President Trump. Their voters expected more of them, and you sort of come to the realization that these Democratic voters themselves don't seem to understand that the question of the 2016 Democratic primary, namely, should the party move the Far Left or the Center Left, had never adequately been settled.

And at some point, it's going to have to be settled. Democratic voters are going to have to settle it without attempting to extort one another, and Democratic politicians and leadership are going to have to settle it without taking one or another of the voter blocks for granted. It's going to be a heavy lift.