Party rebellions on both sides threaten the status quo

In a year in which the unprecedented takes precedence — presidential tweets in the predawn hours, for example, or conflicts with longtime allies — the merely rare gets scant attention.

But something very unusual is happening in American politics, and it merits more consideration than the fleeting events of the day.

It is this: Both the Republicans and Democrats are being riven by rivalries, resentments and rancor, and this may be leading to a vital turning point in American civic life that has the potential of tearing apart both parties, upending the folkways of our politics and altering how the country is governed.

This is not a calamity — in fact, the result may end up enhancing our politics rather than ruining them — but in the meantime the cries of crisis are being heard in stereo.

In this era of enmity, insurrections are flaring in both parties.

The Republicans have a rebel president, a small establishment wing, a devoutly conservative camp and a wildly defiant faction.

None speaks to any other group.

The Democrats, though united against President Donald Trump, have traditional liberals and rowdy rebels, split over whether the party should lurch leftward to become more populist, rear rightward to become more populist, or abandon populism entirely and try to win centrist voters in next year’s midterm congressional elections and in the 2020 presidential contest.

American parties have been split before — the Democrats in 1968, for example, when the party’s traditional elements, especially organized labor, lined up behind Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

Meanwhile, violence spiked outside the Chicago Democratic National Convention hall, and partisans of Sens. Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy were alienated.

But in that year, the Republicans were united behind former Vice President Richard Nixon, who won the election.

Then take the Republicans in 1992, when party regulars with George H.W. Bush repressed a rebellion undertaken by conservative outliers led by commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, who, on the opening night of the party’s Houston convention, proclaimed a “cultural war.”

But that year the Democrats were united behind Gov. Bill Clinton, who won the election.

The divisions of 2017 are of an entirely different nature, pitting party regulars, accustomed to compromise, against champions of uncompromise, many of whom value purity over practicality.

In recent weeks, Sen. Bernie Sanders has been holding tumultuous revival-style events.

“The current model and the current strategy of the Democratic Party is an absolute failure,” he said at one of them, adding: “The Democratic Party must finally understand which side it is on.”

Take that last sentence and insert the word “Republican,” and you will have a sentence that GOP political figures are hearing, perhaps not at rallies but surely in their caucuses, which this year have become raucous.

But raucous caucuses are a sign of danger for any party, and when the cries of rebellion are heard in stereo, they are a sign of danger for the political status quo. That feature of American politics itself is being challenged, special-election primary by special-election primary, Capitol Hill vote by Capitol Hill vote, and day by day in this era of uncertainty and insurrection.