Party divisions run deep both sides
This comment on my Facebook feed summed up the week in politics with laconic accuracy: ‘‘I’m frustrated that there seems to be no room in our political landscape for pro-life Democrats.’’
The lament was no doubt a critique of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where the left’s political elite and their minions and detractors - gathered to officially nominate Hillary Clinton as their candidate for president.
Very much like the Republican Party’s national nominating convention in Cleveland, and perhaps even more so, the Democrats’ event, while intended to unify, became a showcase for deep divisions and growing frustrations within the party.
Day one of the convention was a day of venting.
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ supporters, irate over the Wikileaks disclosures that confirmed party leaders’ efforts to undermine the Sanders campaign, held out hope he would challenge Clinton’s delegates on the convention floor.
The disclosures cost Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz her role as party chairwoman, and deservedly so. But her resignation wasn’t enough to quell accusations she stole the party’s nomination for Clinton.
While Sanders tried to mollify his followers, many remained vocal about their discontent with the party and their hatred of Clinton.
During Monday evening’s speeches, wrote Federalist senior correspondent John Daniel Davidson: ’’Sometimes the chanting and booing stopped speakers short, sometimes it rose up after applause for Clinton had died down. But it was always there, casting an awkward pall over what DNC officials were hoping would be, according to the official schedule, ‘United Together Monday’.’’
As Byron York of the Washington Examiner concluded: ’’It seemed the only Bernie supporters who remained quiet were the ones who had put blue duct tape over their mouths, on which they wrote ‘Silenced by the DNC’.’’
But the DNC has bigger problems than just reining in its Bernie rebellion.
Its leadership should be focusing its efforts on beating Republican nominee Donald Trump, which may prove a more difficult task than logic and some polls suggest.
Instead, the convention became little more than an opportunity for liberal leadership to engage in what Weekly Standard writer Jonathan Last called its ‘‘favorite pastime: virtue signaling’’.
While Trump’s lack of conservative ideology led some of the Republican convention’s prime-time speeches, namely Ivanka Trump’s, to moderate (or in some cases totally ignore) the party’s positions, the Democrats doubled down on liberal causes LGBT rights, the Black Lives Matter movement, gender equality, taxpayer funding of abortion and contraception, etc. positioning itself for a culture war that Trump and many of his followers aren’t even fighting.
Whether it’s an attempt to scoop up some of the party malcontents or a fundamental failure to understand that it’s not facing a typical Republican candidate in Trump, the Democratic Party’s decision to run to its left flank is a confirmation that its ‘‘tent’’ is shrinking.
Indeed, there is no longer any room for a pro-life Democrat, or any Democrat who doesn’t fall in line behind party leaders.
Some conservatives, myself included, despondent over the selection of Trump as our presidential nominee, have been too preoccupied with the cleavages in our own party to pay much attention to the other side.
Philadelphia shows that our entire political landscape is fraught with disagreement.
Many have observed that the GOP has nominated the one candidate who could lose to Clinton. The irony is that the reverse may also be true: The Democrats have nominated the one candidate who could lose to Trump. Chaos within their party is at least partly to blame.