re: #41 goddamnedfrank

The difference is Democrats hate their base but don’t fear it, while Republicans fear their base but don’t hate it.

Really recommend people stop punching down and taking out their frustrations on far leftists who correctly identify the problem with milquetoast centrists going along with mass murder to get along. Like, if the best argument is that people should just quietly accept another five months of flagrant mass murder and ethnic cleansing because Trump will be worse, well that argument just sucks. And sure, we can call people flaky for having and putting principles ahead of realpolitik, but it doesn’t really address the fact that getting centrists to act according to the morals they purport to have might be easier to accomplish than attempting to get who actually believe in things to consciously let openly amoral considerations of expediency occlude those beliefs.

The reason Democrats don’t fear the progressive parts of the D base is that these are the people least likely to show up in elections, especially primaries. “We will end you in the primary” is the best threat to use vs. a politician, but unfortunately its very toothless on the D side of things.

The other big problem in D politics is that the degeneration of the GOP into an insane freak show personality cult has forced every sane political position into the Democratic party, and there are real conflicts there that aren’t easy to paper over.