In Wake of Clinton Defeat, Calls in Democratic Party Grow for a “Revolutionary” Shift Further Left
In an election in which the politics of the Democratic left were repudiated…the answer, for many of those same Democrats, is to shift further to the left.
The Hill is reporting that many of the liberals to whom they have spoken in the wake of the election are looking to ignite a revolution, a “Tea Party-style revolt,” from within the party, with the primary objective being to purge it of the “Clinton-corporate wing” altogether.
David Goodfriend, a former official in Bill Clinton’s administration, said, “One thing for sure is that the Democratic Party will lean more on Bernie than Hillary going forward,” referring to Bernie Sanders, unsuccessful challenger to Hillary Clinton for the nomination of the Democratic Party.
For his part, Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary and himself a high-profile progressive Democrat, was on a conference call with members of Democracy for America, a group supportive of progressive ideals at the grassroots level, and said, “The Democratic Party can no longer be the same, it has been repudiated.
“This has been a huge refutation of establishment politics and the political organization has got to be changed...if the Democratic Party can’t do it, we’ll do it through a third party.”
According to The Hill, many Democrats see the election of the next chair of the Democratic National Committee as being the first battle at which progressives will try to wrest control of the party from their version of the establishment. Bernie Sanders has endorsed Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) for that position. Ellison, a Muslim as well as a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, would clearly represent a step to the left for the Democrats if he were to, in fact, end up serving as chair of the DNC.
Should this move in a more leftward direction come to pass, it will be fascinating to see just how it is received by the electorate, at large, given their decision to hand over the Oval Office to Donald Trump just a few days ago.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large