Cannibalism: Democrats Start by Eating their Own

The Democratic Resist-Trump Movement could change America.    Or it could self destruct.  

Grass roots legitimacy is both a blessing and a curse.  It empowers and it destroys.

The Sanders voters create the energy, and they are still pissed off.   They know they are right.

Trump attacks "so-called angry crowds"

Readers at home watching the news could easily miss something big.  Democrats who were passive and unenthusiastic in October are angry and fearful now.    Trump motivated people in a way that Hillary did not.

Thousands of people are showing up at Town Halls and public marches and rallies and at Democratic Central Committee meetings.  This cannot be faked and it cannot be paid for, although it can be--and is--organized. 

Fox News, Donald Trump, and Trump associates are all selling the idea that the protests are  "fake" in some way, the protesters paid and bussed in.  They are called "outside agitators" and illegitimate.    Elected officials play along and echo that but they know better.  The district staffs of elected officials can see it and no doubt they have disabused the Member or Senator.  

The protesters are real citizens, really motivated, really engaged.

Democratic meeting:  Standing Room Only  

Off year elections turn less on persuasion than on motivation.  Turnout is key.  Voters did not change their minds in the 2010 wave election, which saw the House of Representatives swing from a big Democratic majority to a big Republican majority.   What mattered was motivation. Republican voters showed up.  Democratic voters did not.   Republicans won big.  That is why the Democratic engagement is very important.  2018 could be a "wave election."

There are risks, and people close to the interaction within the progressive-liberal-Democratic electorate can see it.   Few Democrats identify primarily as party-oriented Democrats.   The motivated members of the party identity as people interested in a cause:

***Environmentalists, with a specific interest e.g. climate change, pipelines, oceans, salmon,    urban sprawl, air quality, coal, nuclear power.

***Women-advocates, interested in reproductive health or pay equality.
   
***Peace, primarily in opposition to neoconservative foreign wars or nuclear war.
   
***Unions, primarily public employment unions but also construction unions.
   
***Social justice, based on poverty, race, immigration status, access to justice.

***Food, including GMO opposition, animal cruelty, pesticides, herbicides.

***Marijuana, including users, growers, sales, state autonomy.

Trump and Trump-ism is the unifying and energizing flash point.  Trump-opposition will persist, but the energy and movement could easily self-destruct.

***It will create its own straw man for opponents to highlight.   Because it is grass roots it cannot be controlled.  People volunteer themselves.   Anyone can set up a group and call itself "Indivisible" and this includes trollers and false flag opponents.   We will see Nazi and Successionist and Black Reparation groups soon and they will have signs and platforms that find their way onto cable TV.   Weirdly dressed people and outrageous signs are good TV. 

***Some people will use violence and the image of the protest will switch from respectable citizen to lawless marauder who is endangering the peace.  TV cameras find violence irresistible.  That will change the frame.  Violent protesters could makeTrump look like a hero.

***It will splinter into segments.  Environmentalist who oppose pipelines may be concerned about fossil fuels but oppose the union constructors of those pipelines.   People concerned about poverty may oppose people concerned about the dangers of mass produced cheap food.  The immigration issue cuts two ways, with some people eager for immigrants to be employable and other concerned about the labor competition they create with native born workers.  

***It will turn on itself.  The "good" is the enemy of the "best."  The strongest elements of the protesters were formerly Sanders supporters.  The war between the Sanders wing and the establishment wing is underway.  Donald Trump understands this and he keeps trolling Democrats.   

Trolling Democrats, making trouble.

The recent choice of Perez over Ellison as DNC chair continued and exacerbated the division.

The opposition that Ron Wyden, a Democratic Senator from Oregon, gets from progressives is instructive.  Indivisible and other progressive activists might well insist on an unelectable candidate to oppose Greg Walden.  Wyden has a 100% rating from the Oregon League of Conservation voters and is ranked as one of the ten most liberal US Senators.    Many local progressives publicly post within Indivisible discussion groups that Wyden should be opposed.  He just isn't good enough.

Original Post: Democratic Senators Draw Progressive Outrage for vote for Interior Secretary Zinke.  

Comments posted in the past few hours.

   Comment:  "Ron Wyden, being typical Ron Wyden.  Please stop giving him a pass."
   Comment:  "it was the unprincipled voters who exacted a cost delivering an unelectable candidate [Hillary]. . . . if I were Wyden I would care less about appearing moderate and more abut being on the right side of the decision and history."
   Comment: "As a grandmother who does her best to follow global warming science I do not consider fossil fuel advocacy to be a moderate position.   I consider any legislator who does so to be complicit with murder."

Anti Pipeline Protesters at Wyden Town Meeting

   Comment: "I just called Wyden to let him know how disappointed I am in his vote."
   Comment: " Senator Wyden's yes vote for Ryan Zinke as Interior Sec is NOT resisting the Trump agenda, so I will be calling his office today and giving them hell.  

What this means for Democrats:   Many progressive activists are primarily motivated by the issues that motivate them not the candidate who might carry a suite policies they generally like.   

Especially within the context of fellow-activists, their attention is on the details of policy, and whether they candidate is fully supportive, not on the general binary choice of good or bad compared to a Republican.   The implications for the political effectiveness of Indivisible and other groups is whether its members will coalesce in opposition to Trump and to Rep. Greg Walden or whether it will splinter into an anti-corporatist Sanders group versus a "regular Democrat" group, or into particularized environmental or feminist groups that find any Democratic candidate with the potential of defeating Walden simply to be too impure to support.

Don't compromise or settle!

As this blog reported ten days ago, a Democratic populist can beat Greg Walden.   Ron Wyden won a majority of votes in the Republican-majority 2nd District now represented by Walden.  A pure Ashland liberal, environmentalist, anti-herbicide, vegan, anti pipeline activist likely can not.   But possibly only a pure candidate of the environmental left can win the Democratic primary because the most active members of the environmental left define compromise or disagreement on a position not as "representation of a diverse polity" but as "sell out of principle."   

A populist sees the task of representation of diversity as a positive value, one that co-exists with progressive values of equality, social justice, and environmental stewardship     A successful populist will be able to persuade people who identify primarily as "progressive" to accept that idea.  Eastern Oregon will insist on having a representative, and under democratic values it deserves a representative, and that person will seem imperfect to many Ashland-area progressives.   Simple as that.  

Democrats will adjust to that or they won't.