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The Democratic Party is less a political party in pursuit of particular policy goals than a professional association organized to defend and advance the careers of its most valued members.
Say what you will about the Republican Party, but we all know exactly what they're driving at and what they'd like to see this country become. Just about all of them share that vision and it animates everything they do. https://twitter.com/OsitaNwanevu/status/1149915544327471104
The Democratic Party, by contrast, wants majorities not because they deeply want to accomplish anything in particular with them, but because everyone gets to keep their jobs that way. https://twitter.com/OsitaNwanevu/status/1149916254888693761
There are structual factors shaping strategy and thinking in both parties that shouldn't be downplayed. The system is genuinely tilted against the Democrats in ways that incentivize timidity.
In any case, in the past couple of years we've seen Republicans take on a number of wildly unpopular policy efforts -- the tax cuts, Obamacare repeal, etc -- simply because they believed they should be done. It is very hard to imagine Democrats doing the same.
What grates leadership about AOC and the others is that they've had the temerity to suggest that certain issues - climate change, immigration policy under Trump, and so on -- are too important for Democrats to address from a place of defensive complacency.
None of this is fundamentally about primary challenges. Justice Democrats didn't invent them. People primary people. Always have, always will. It's not about caucus and party unity. No one's looking to excommunicate Tim Ryan or Seth Moulton or Kathleen Rice.
We're witnessing this deeply embarrassing public spectacle from House Dems because a handful of people have come in with the temerity to ask that the Democratic Party be more than what it is.
I've said this before, but I think the Conyers & Franken situations are instructive. There was no moral or strategic reason for hesitance on the part of leadership in either case. The foot-dragging only makes sense if we understand the party as a club. https://twitter.com/OsitaNwanevu/status/1008015463517970433
Anyway, if you think this mess looks stupid now, be sure to revisit it in a decade's time. https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/1123252422015512577
ICE is going to terrorize God knows how many families this weekend. Dems don't want to try and force a trial for Trump over that or anything else, but they are going to have a public meltdown over the horror of haing to face challengers next year they'll probably beat anyway.
