Democratic equivalent of the Tea Party?

[pbrower2a]

https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/12/16/indivisible-resisting-trump-agenda.pdf

Here's the Tea Party success: it thwarted any chance for progressive reforms. The Tea Party succeeded by:

1. Changing votes and defeating legislation
2. Radically slowing federal policy making
3. Preventing any compromise by Republicans
4. Shaping the national debate to fit its terms
5. Ultimately allowing an extreme-right government hostile to every liberal reform of the last century

This was by a small group of people who represented but a small part of America. Very soon the US government will be nothing more than an enforcer of the will of a rapacious elite that might turn the calendar back as much as a century on political life.

What the liberal opposition must avoid doing that the Tea Party did:

1. Fabricating a reality
2. Threatening people that they see as enemies
3. Physically assaulting people
4. Using obscenities and such offenses as burning people in effigy
5. Targeting hatred not only at Congress, but also at persons for their religion or ethnicity. (For us that would be against Protestant fundamentalists and white people of the Mountain and Deep South).

We must be better than they are...

It's all local, so but national issues like Social Security, Medicare, poverty, environmental quality, tax equity, education, and reproductive rights are personal issues. Political life is an extension of personal morality.   

[Fuzzy Bear]

https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/12/16/indivisible-resisting-trump-agenda.pdf

Here's the Tea Party success: it thwarted any chance for progressive reforms. The Tea Party succeeded by:

1. Changing votes and defeating legislation
2. Radically slowing federal policy making
3. Preventing any compromise by Republicans
4. Shaping the national debate to fit its terms
5. Ultimately allowing an extreme-right government hostile to every liberal reform of the last century

This was by a small group of people who represented but a small part of America. Very soon the US government will be nothing more than an enforcer of the will of a rapacious elite that might turn the calendar back as much as a century on political life.

What the liberal opposition must avoid doing that the Tea Party did:

1. Fabricating a reality
2. Threatening people that they see as enemies
3. Physically assaulting people
4. Using obscenities and such offenses as burning people in effigy
5. Targeting hatred not only at Congress, but also at persons for their religion or ethnicity. (For us that would be against Protestant fundamentalists and white people of the Mountain and Deep South).

We must be better than they are...

It's all local, so but national issues like Social Security, Medicare, poverty, environmental quality, tax equity, education, and reproductive rights are personal issues. Political life is an extension of personal morality.   

Trump is a MODERATE Republican.  This is what many Democrats don't get.  He's not beholden to Congressional Republicans, and they know it.

There will be many areas where Trump's actual proposals will appeal to a coalitions of Republicans and Democrats.  It is far from impossible that we will be back to the days were party regimentation in Congress will be lessened, as it was prior to 1994.  Trump's proposals to strengthen infrastructure, and (possibly) his proposals on healthcare may be issues that will be popular with some Democrats, even as they repel the "miniscule government" faction of Republicans.  (Democrats are emotionally vested in the ACA, but it's viability was in question from the day the SCOTUS shot down the expansion of Medicaid.)  The Tea Party wanted to destroy Obama and GOP Fellow Travelers.  That sort of concept isn't in line with the kind of compromise and achievement that gets things done.

[Person Man]

https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/12/16/indivisible-resisting-trump-agenda.pdf

Here's the Tea Party success: it thwarted any chance for progressive reforms. The Tea Party succeeded by:

1. Changing votes and defeating legislation
2. Radically slowing federal policy making
3. Preventing any compromise by Republicans
4. Shaping the national debate to fit its terms
5. Ultimately allowing an extreme-right government hostile to every liberal reform of the last century

This was by a small group of people who represented but a small part of America. Very soon the US government will be nothing more than an enforcer of the will of a rapacious elite that might turn the calendar back as much as a century on political life.

What the liberal opposition must avoid doing that the Tea Party did:

1. Fabricating a reality
2. Threatening people that they see as enemies
3. Physically assaulting people
4. Using obscenities and such offenses as burning people in effigy
5. Targeting hatred not only at Congress, but also at persons for their religion or ethnicity. (For us that would be against Protestant fundamentalists and white people of the Mountain and Deep South).

We must be better than they are...

It's all local, so but national issues like Social Security, Medicare, poverty, environmental quality, tax equity, education, and reproductive rights are personal issues. Political life is an extension of personal morality.   

A century ago, we actually had liberals willing to die in the streets for their beliefs.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

A century ago, we actually had liberals willing to die in the streets for their beliefs.

A century ago we had liberals, conservatives, progressives, monarchists, socialists, and pretty much every one else dying in the trenches.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

It was supposed to be Occupy, but they failed.

[Crumpets]

The Tea Party didn't really succeed. Otherwise Ted Cruz would be President and Glenn Beck wouldn't be mea culpa-ing. Instead, it mutated and split like a colony of paramecia until one strand got lucky enough to gain dominance.

Likewise, Occupy will not be the Democratic means to populist success, nor will Bernie-ism. It will be something else entirely which may gain inspiration from these movements, but might even be different enough that yesteryear's populist Democrats might not identify with it.

[The_Doctor]

Trump is not that moderate, given the context of the times and what he campaigned on. More ever, with the GOP Congress and his relative inexperience, he's not going to govern as a moderate. Given all things he's very much a Warren Harding.

There is/will be a Democratic grassroots movement and it will be a combination of Obamaism and Bernieism. The intellectual synthesis will be the story of the next four to eight years. And the next great Democratic majority will result from it. Much like the Wilson progressive era and the ideological synthesis forged in the Harding-Coolidge era, the Democratic Party will become poised to take the grasroots and ride it to the next party system.

The issues in 8 years are going to be radically different from the issues we're discussing now. And given all that, what Bernie says is going to make a lot more sense at that point. So will what Obama is saying too.