Here's what the Democrats are doing wrong [View all]

[BeyondGeography]

Comment: The pro-Bernie passage, if it annoys you, shouldn't turn your head from the issue of mainstream D's tendency to underestimate the strength and durability of anti-elite sentiment.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/10/heres-what-the-democrats-are-doing-wrong-commentary.html

There's now virtual consensus, even among Democrats' most loyal backers, that the party has been decimated nationwide at all levels of government. Save for a few select regions going against the grain - Northern Virginia, Southern California, etc. - the party's fortunes have fallen precipitously, and in its current state will be in no position to govern nationally any time soon.

Given the present political climate, it would be easy for prospective Democratic standard-bearers to calculate that trafficking in anti-Trump fervor is the key to reversing these grim trends. With his overall unpopularity, and the visceral rage he inspires in liberals, Trump has enabled the emergence of a hucksterish grievance industry among portions of the center-left.

Many of their leading lights peddle corporatized "resistance" paraphernalia and promote emotionally-satisfying but fanciful scenarios whereby Trump will be ousted from office imminently for "treason"-related offenses. Given Trump's long history of promoting grifters and cheats, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that he's indirectly engendered this new breed of them.

...Democrats can take a partial lesson in the opposition Trump has cultivated. During the campaign and right up to today, political, cultural, and economic elites have coalesced against Trump with a vigor unlike anything before seen in the modern era. Whether it's the media, the intelligence community, or high finance, Trump is viewed as Enemy Number One by massive swaths of elite society.

Rather than cater to spurned elites' preferences - as Hillary Clinton very consciously did -Democrats would be wise to conclude that agitating against decadent elites is in fact a highly viable strategy, not just electorally but ethically. Elites are distrusted and disliked not because Americans are bumbling dupes prone to demagogic blame-shifting, but because elites are indeed genuinely blame-worthy. And Americans are right to scorn them. All within the not-so-distant past, their malfeasance has crashed the economy, hobbled governmental institutions, mired the country in endless war, and frayed societal bonds.

If it is to regain electoral viability, the Democratic Party's next standard-bearer can't be someone comfortably ensconced in one of these elite strata, where politics is more a matter of cultural affectation than life-or-death exigency. It also can't be someone who looks back on the Obama years with unadulterated fondness, because whatever you think about the man personally, Obama presided over a long period of fermenting discontent which culminated in the electorate opting to gamble on one of the most outlandishly anomalous candidates in all of American history.

...Whether it's (Sanders) or someone else who takes up the mantle ahead of 2020, the lesson to be drawn is that a successful candidate must be animated by popular discontent with the prevailing order. And in the process, angering discredited elites -- whether they be in media, Washington, or Hollywood -- must not be seen as a burden to be overcome, but an advantage to be capitalized on.