Liberals who still spend their time reveling in Trump's apparent political incompetency have not learned anything from the 2016 election.
-
-
Show this thread
-
Fragmented progressive forces have to get it together to cohere into a progressive populist equivalent of the Tea Party.
Show this thread -
Liberals are afraid of such a move, because they think that's moving to the "left extreme."
Show this thread -
They fail to see that progressive positions on most economic and social issues now enjoy super-majority support.
Show this thread -
They fail to see that the supposed "center" is no longer tied to any substantial social base.
Show this thread -
They fail to see the major realignment process underway, where old stances are shifting as populist insurgents articulate new visions.
Show this thread -
They fail to see that Trump ascended because he took on the superficial trappings of outsiderdom, which enabled him to play "insurgent."
Show this thread -
Liberals fail to see how Trump was only able to effectively claim the populist space because they first failed to even attempt to claim it.
Show this thread -
But it's not enough for aspiring progressive populist insurgents to critique the failures of liberals or the Democratic Party establishment.
Show this thread -
The Democratic Party leadership's long-term abandonment of working people culminated spectacularly in its electoral failures in 2016.
Show this thread -
When a political party's leadership cohort fails so spectacularly, it is typically replaced—with haste...
Show this thread -
The hard truth is that aspiring progressive populist insurgents were nowhere close to ready to replace the
@DNC's stale leadership.Show this thread -
Because the hard truth is most of us are amateurs who do not actually know how to organize an actual social base into a political force.
Show this thread -
To be clear,
@DNC doesn't know how to do that very well either. But they sit atop an old structure that can still harness reliable voters.Show this thread -
The only path to power available to populist insurgents is to inspire and organize a new base of presently "unreliable" voters.
Show this thread -
But the left is stuck in a long-developing class-based insularity.
Show this thread -
Politically active liberals and their more radical insurgent offspring are mostly situated within the top 20% of US society.
Show this thread -
Those who join the ranks from the working class tend to assimilate into the social elitism of the clubhouse.
Show this thread -
And progressives will remain on the sidelines unless and until a crop of insurgent leaders breaks from this class-insular holding pattern.
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.