Democratic split: Base wants it all; party wants to win
DUNWOODY, Ga. — Democrats are facing an open breach between the demands of their political base and the strict limits of their power, as liberal activists dream of transforming the health care system and impeaching President Donald Trump, while candidates in hard-fought elections ask wary independent voters merely for a fresh chance at governing.
The growing tension between the party’s ascendant militant wing and Democrats in conservative-leaning terrain, where the party must compete to win power in Congress, was on vivid, split-screen display over the weekend: in Chicago, where Sen. Bernie Sanders led a revival-style meeting of his progressive devotees, and in Atlanta, where Democrats are spending colossal sums of money in hopes of seizing a traditionally Republican congressional district.
It may be essential for Democrats to reconcile the party’s two clashing impulses if they are to retake the House of Representatives in 2018. In a promising political environment, a drawnout struggle over Democratic strategy and ideology could spill into primary elections and disrupt the party’s path to a majority.
On the one hand, progressives are more emboldened than they have been in decades, galvanized by Sanders’ unexpected successes in 2016 and empowered by the surge of grass-roots energy dedicated to confronting an unpopular president and pushing the party leftward.
Sanders rallied his youthful, often-raucous coalition Saturday night at a gathering dubbed the “People’s Summit,” where supporters hailed him in worshipful language. One Colorado couple hauled a small banner through the hangar-size Mccormick Place, pleading with the still-independent Vermont senator to create a new “People’s Party.”
Sanders and many attendees enthused over the surprise showing of the British Labour Party, under the left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn, in last week’s election. Democrats can electrify voters, they warned, only by embracing the Sanders agenda of universal health care, free college tuition and full employment.
Speaking for just under an hour, Sanders, who was met with chants of “Bernie, Bernie” and pleas of “2020!” crowed that