Democratic Split

Democrats in New York unseated Joe Crowley, who lost his primary election to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In the 2014 mid-terms the better funded candidate won 91% of the time.

Click: business insider

Progressive Democrats are filling the op-ed pages and social media with a sense of victory and vindication. The insurgent progressive defeated the establishment liberal. The young female candidate with $500,000 beat the white male liberal who had $3,000,000 to spend. The candidate who said we should abolish ICE defeated the one who was merely pro-immigrant.

Meanwhile, at the nation's Capital, the swing vote Justice Kennedy announced his retirement now, before the November election, so Trump could nominate a replacement. This way a sure-thing Republican Senate can use the "nuclear option" simple-majority-vote to install him in office, moving the Court to the right for a generation.

Elections have consequences.  

The division in the Democratic Party is deeper than the division among Republicans. There is a GOP never-Trump sentiment, but 90% of Republicans find reasons to back Trump. Social conservatives like his Court picks, anti-tax people like the tax bill, ethno-nationalists like his tough actions against immigrants and foreigners. 

Democrats have a split which comes down to money--whether having money is good, or whether it is sign of  unjust enrichment.  Establishment Democrats have made peace with the fact of unequal wealth. They recognize that through some combination of luck, ambition, diligence, or inheritance that there will be wealthy people, some of whom have progressive political values--or interests that are acceptable to the candidate. Hillary Clinton said there were good billionaires and bad ones.  Bernie Sanders condemned billionaires. 

A great many Democrats see no significant difference between a "corporate Democrat" and a Republican. They understand they have extraordinary leverage within the Democratic Party. If the left abandons the Democrat, the Democrat loses.Their power is not to convert Republicans. It is to demand that the Democrat be fully, unequivocally progressive, or they will stay home or vote Third Party. Joe Crowley's loss sends a message.

This one from the DCC

We are currently in a moment of frantic fundraising activity for Democrats and Republican candidates. I get emails every single day from Kate Brown, Jeff Merkley, and Ron Wyden, plus Planned Parenthood and Democratic Attorney Generals and the DCC, all saying that Democrats are being outspent with disastrous impending consequences. Emails from Donald Trump express resentment at Democratic resistance and celebration of triumph over that resistance, plus requests for more money to keep winning.

Progressive voters who congregate in college towns and liberal coastal enclaves can get what they want: both fully progressive candidates and victory. Ocasio-Cortez had enough money, and her New York district is majority Latino. People in those enclaves can generalize their experience to the wider US electorate, but Trump demonstrated that people in "flyover" country resent the cultural values of those enclaves. What works in a Latino district in New York may not work in Ohio or Michigan or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin.

Progressive Democrats have a message that resonates to many: the middle class is being squeezed because the wealth of America is distributed unfairly. However, majorities in swing-state jurisdictions don't respond as readily to words of resentment over wealth. Hillary, not Bernie, won big in the primary election in many red states. Many voters like the idea of wealth, admire wealthy people, and would like to be wealthy themselves. (After all, they buy lottery tickets.) 

Michael Bloomberg would represent a kind of moderate, culturally liberal, pro-business Democrat who could provide a credible alternative to Trump. He could self-fund. Still, he would trigger the charge of "corporate Democrat sellout" among progressives. 

Establishment Democrats have been led to support policies of accommodation to wealth in part because that is where the campaign money is. Will progressive candidates be able to raise money within the insurgent progressive left? 

The showdown within the Democratic electorate wont just show up at the ballot box.  It will show up in the Contributions and Expenditures reports.  Progressive Democrats will need to click the big red buttons if they want to change the Party.