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The Democrats’ TEA Party Moment

I suppose calling the rise of the Progressive Movement a “TEA Party moment” doesn’t quite work, as Democrats certainly do not believe that they’ve been “taxed enough already.” So let’s call it the FRAT Party movement. Free Stuff, Regulations, Authoritarianism, and Taxes. These are, after all, at the heart of the Progressive Movement in America.

Just as the conservative movement split the Republican Party in two and set off what seems like a never ending civil war within the party structure, the FRAT Party aims to burn the Democratic Party to the ground and upend the liberal leadership still hanging on from the 1990s. While we have our Ron Hedlunds, Waverly Woods, and Corey Stewarts, the Democrats have their Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Kate Aronoff laments [1] those in the mainstream liberal media still discounting the likes of Bernie Sanders and his socialist revolution.

“The danger here isn’t just that certain status quo-friendly viewpoints are disproportionately represented in the country’s biggest outlets. It’s that their own ideological blinders mean they get [2] a [3] lot [4] of [5] things [6] wrong [7], and are still paid handsomely to tell Americans how to think and vote.”

There’s a media conspiracy against the socialists and their FRAT Party you see. Six major corporations are throwing shade at dear old Bernie in order to preserve a status quo that only works for the top one percent.

This is the kind of rhetoric that led Republican “Burn It To The Grounders” to support Donald Trump, mindlessly and passionately. We can probably expect the same level of continued support for Bernie.

These progressives are outraged at the totally unbalanced coverage their candidates, like Kamala Harris, are receiving at the hands of their once trusted liberal outlets.

“Bret Stephens moaned that Kamala Harris challenging Biden made ‘white Americans feel racially on trial.’ Complaining about Democratic candidates’ embrace of universal healthcare and more humane immigration policies, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough — another luminary attuned to the concerns of Real America — counseled ‘woke Democrats’ to ‘refrain from blowing themselves up politically and re-electing Trump.’ ”

Meanwhile, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is practically accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of racism [8], arguing that she has a nasty habit of calling out “women of color.”

The FRAT Party will not be assuaged by a debate field that almost universally supports some version of universal healthcare, massive overhauls to the U.S. energy system, massive tax increases, further centralization of the U.S. command economy, and massive handouts to college students and immigrants. No, this is not enough. Their outrage at the economic injustice of American Capitalism will not be bought off with only 80 to 85 percent of their agenda.

It’s 100 percent support for things like Medicare For All, the Green New Deal, disbanding ICE, and eliminating hundreds of billions in student loan debt, or nothing. What’s funny is that liberal media icons like Joe Scarborough and Jennifer Rubin used to be Republican Establishment hacks before being run off by the conservative movement that exploded within the Republican Party. Now they find themselves bereft of a strong neo-liberal base within the Democratic Party’s infrastructure.

Truly, moderates have no sanctuary. Trump’s populists and the Free Stuff, Regulations, Authoritarianism, and Taxes movement simply will not allow them to hold any ground, if they can help it.

Moderate Republicans all remember those days when conservatives in the House of Representatives spent their time trying to defeat bi-partisan bills in the Senate. Well, now the shoe is on the other foot [9].

“Progressives were outraged when Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that the House would take up — and pass — a bill approved by the GOP-controlled Senate, and which progressives argued did not do enough to protect children in government custody. The Senate bill had overwhelming bipartisan support.”

There was a time when Speaker Pelosi must have been laughing at the paralyzing disharmony of populist politics handcuffing her friends on the other side of the aisle. Now, she’s neck deep in exactly that sort of epidemic of paralysis.

The FRAT Party is going to take over the Democratic Party. If Donald Trump and his base of angry populists were able to completely capture the reigns of power within the RNC, then there is no doubt that the activists spawned by Bernie Sanders will accomplish the same feat within the Democratic Party.

Eventually, maybe, Americans will realize the dangers inherent to these populist movements and will rise up against the rule of angry mobs on the extreme wings of America’s partisan divide. Until then, we’re in for one hell of a ride.

Of course, the libertarian in me cannot let this moment go without suggesting that maybe if the federal government wasn’t so gosh darn powerful in the first place, it wouldn’t warrant the attention of angry mobs looking to force the other 80 percent to think and live exactly as they see fit.

Maybe if the federal government was restrained to its Constitutional mandates and maybe if the House of Representatives took back their rightful powers from an executive branch overwhelmed by the authorities entrusted to it, we wouldn’t need all these populists in the first place.

Maybe if so many American lives depended more on their relationships with their families, communities, employers and local governments than they do on the federal government, it wouldn’t matter so much who was in charge, so long as they were competent managers with integrity and patriotism.

Just a thought. No need to take it too seriously.