Whether it's a fight over policy or a presidential elections, in modern politics Democrats are always forced to fight a war on four fronts.

First, Democrats must always struggle against an opposition party of bigots and imbeciles, led by a gang of vandals and madmen.

Rush Limbaugh today: "I’ve had dinner with John Bolton a couple times. I’ve met him two or three times, and if this passage in the book is true, and this is actually what he’s intending, it’s not the John Bolton I thought I knew, this kind of disloyalty."

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) January 27, 2020

Second, Democrats must push back against a cynical political press and it's pathological Both Siderism in the face of overwhelming evidence that Both Sides are most emphatically not equally and oppositely to blame of the failure of American political institutions.

just amazing

NYT: “Both [sides] are bending the facts to fit their case.”

NYT then fails to detail a SINGLE instance of Dems “bending” impeachment facts; https://t.co/6Wm5lo86oZ

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) January 27, 2020

Third, Democrats must continue to slog forward in the face of sustained fire from the "Blow everything up and start over!!!" white-and-privileged dead-ender caucus, whose "politics" is counterrevolutionary treason that prefers four more years of Trump (with no personal consequences to themselves) over "compromise".

And fourth, Democrats must contend with the fact that no matter how sonic boom loud or clarion clear their words and ideas may be, they will always fall on the deaf ears of the 50% of the country who are completely checked out and do not know or care about any of this.

And while Republicans need only worry about using their vast media empire focused on keeping their homogeneous, ignorant, racist base whipped up and all goose-stepping pointed in the same direction, to get anything done, Democrats must continuously fight this four front war while trying to hold together an incredibly diverse and volatile coalition.  From Ezra Klein in the NYT:

Put simply, Democrats can’t win running the kinds of campaigns and deploying the kinds of tactics that succeed for Republicans. They can move to the left — and they are — but they can’t abandon the center or, given the geography of American politics, the center-right, and still hold power. Democrats are modestly, but importantly, restrained by diversity and democracy. Republicans are not...


Appealing to Democrats requires appealing to a lot of different kinds of people with different interests. Republicans are overwhelmingly dependent on white voters. Democrats are a coalition of liberal whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and mixed-race voters. Republicans are overwhelmingly dependent on Christian voters. Democrats are a coalition of liberal and nonwhite Christians, Jews, Muslims, New Agers, agnostics, Buddhists and so on. Three-quarters of Republicans identify as conservative, while only half of Democrats call themselves liberals — and for Democrats, that’s a historically high level.


As a result, winning the Democratic primary means winning liberal whites in New Hampshire and traditionalist blacks in South Carolina. It means talking to Irish Catholics in Boston and atheists in San Francisco. It means inspiring liberals without arousing the fears of moderates. It’s important preparation for the difficult, pluralistic work of governing, in which the needs and concerns of many different groups must be balanced against one another.

So since we're all going to lob bombs at each other during the primaries, how about sticking to flashbang grenades that temporarily stun, and not bunker-busters designed to so cripple a primary opponent so brutally that, even if your favorite candidate wins the endorsement of the Democratic Party, they will limp into the general election mortally wounded and having left nothing but bitter resentment in their wake?

Republished with permission from Driftglass