Like the right, the left in the USA has always had a multitude of subfactions with different belief structures, goals, and ideals. These range from the oldschool Liberals to Jackson Progressives, to the Southern Dems, down through your Libertarians, Greens, and so on down to the dregs in the Anarchist and Socialist camps.
The DNC having a massive disconnect between its constituents and higher-ups is nothing new. At this point the party has almost forty consecutive years of running on extremely popular platforms, but then barely pushing them at all when they get the chance. Sometimes, like the ACA (for a more recent example), their inability to push forward policy is absolutely a good thing, Other times, like when they flat-out run on things like repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, or the Patriot Act, get in, and then do fuck all about it, leaving it for Bush or Trump to knock the fuck over for the easiest win in history, speaks infinitely louder.
What has changed over the years is how they choose to conduct themselves, and equally importantly, which subfaction of the Dems was in charge of the Clown Car that was the DNC when it was puttering along. When the oldschool Northern Dems or Southern Dems were in charge, you tended to actually get good policy from them for a change and actually good legislation worked on with the other side, which is exactly why the DNC fought tooth and claw to prevent those from gaining a foothold in any way, shape, or form. The DNC wanted the Uniparty status quo, and make no mistake of that.
Different subfactions would gain and lose power in the Democratic Party over the years, and get to control the steering wheel of the Clown Car, but the people dictating where the car was actually going
never changed. However, the powers that be had their preferences, and none were as obvious as the Blue Dog Caucus, self-proclaimed centrists who basically were Neocons in every way but social issues and would basically do everything the Neocons wanted and then some before whining about how if
only they had more power, they could have prevented it, as if we were, collectively, supposed to ignore shit like most of the fuckers voting to invade Iraq or for the Patriot Act in the fucking first place. The establishment could not suck the dicks of these assholes hard enough, because they could claim to be left on Social issues and then turn right around and vote lockstep with the Neocons on shit. Nobody likes a fucking triangulator.
While all this was going on, the Dem establishment never missed a chance to fuck up any effort to fix this paradigm. Any candidate that looked to be riding a populist swell or looked like they'd actually fucking
do anything would get nuked from orbit. Vermont finally has enough of living embodiment of everything wrong with politics Joe Lieberman and successfully Primaries his ass out of office? Well, too bad, fuckers, he's gonna run as an Independent with the DNC funneling hundreds of millions into his campaign coffers while actively forcing their ground game to not back Ned Lamont, all that to stop a relatively unimportant seat from being taken by an actual populist. That uppity little shit Anthony Weiner's agitating against the revolving door of Congress again, and this time he's caucusing with Republicans on a bill that would force congressmen to disclose when they had a conflict-of-interest with the beneficiary of a bill? We can't have that. Better make a sex scandal materialize from nowhere and quietly feed it to the press on the Right at
juuuuuust at the right time to completely fuck his career. A major presidential candidate is riding an actual populist swell back in 2000? Fucking cut his mic during a press event to turn him into a meme, pay off the press to actively deny him coverage afterwards to stall his momentum, buy off the other contenders, and award the most status-quo candidate you have the nomination, even though he's as Charismatic as a box of rocks. As acting DNC chair, the same dude you
just fucked out of the Nomination employs an actual strategy that actually wins over moderate Republicans? We can't have that shit, what do you think this is, a Republic?! Oust him from his position and replace him with a shithead who insists we only need to run ads or campaign in stronghold states, so the only Dems that can get into a position of power are the ones so thoroughly on the take that there is
zero chance of them ever doing anything but the most status-quo shit imaginable. Actual candidates worth a damn are running in 2004? Tamp down that and run human speedbump John Kerry. Fucking
magic.
Neither of the very public two times Bernie got cornholed by the establishment were anything new, is what I'm getting at here.
However, like I said earlier, what breed of Clown gets their hands on the steering wheel periodically changes up a bit over time. See, when I was active in the DNC, the Progressives weren't as crazy and the Socialists weren't as powerful, internally, in the Democratic Party as they are now. In general they were seen, at best, as useful idiots, and at worst, dangerous elements that needed to be reined in. Members of them in positions of actual power were virtually unheard of at the time, because the Dem establishment wanted Blue Dog-style Dems. The problem is that behind the scenes, a lot of the big guns in the staffer departments were getting old. They were retiring, leaving the DNC in disgust, and outright dying. This caused an enormous power vaccuum within the mid-level staff in the DNC, and who filled these positions were mostly these old politicians' understudies - who were, predominantly, much less experienced and - much harder left.
In 2008, the Progressives gained control of the steering wheel, and it was expected that Hillary would bulldoze her competition at the time. Unfortunately for her, Hillary got curb-stomped. Very early on, her incredibly bad popularity caught up to her, and it became mathematically impossible for her to win the nomination, and Obama clinched it. The establishment didn't care; Obeme was still their guy. The thing is, in her anger, Hillary refused to concede, and her supporters, including a number of major staffers, went full fifth column, threatening to Broker the Convention unless Hillary was the declared the nominee, even though she could not win at that point. I remember it well because several of my family members were die-hard for Hillary and flat-out could not accept that any other Dem could win. If you were on Democratic websites at the time, you got to see some truly inspired shit, as enraged Hillary supporters fired off Anti-Obama screeds that wouldn't have gone amiss on Stormfront. Ya boi
@AnOminous can confirm it for you. What started with temper-tantrums grew quickly to the point where they were talking about primarying establishment candidates and actively crippling the Obama campaign, and in one of the worst moves ever made, the DNC chose a veritable Devil's Bargain to appease them, by having Obama throw her a bone with a cabinet position. This was a fucking terrible decision.
Anyone familiar with how modern hard-lefties operate in online spaces will tell you that the second one of them gets into a sufficiently high-level position of authority, unless they are somehow stopped, they will, over time, take over any available positions within an infrastructure. This is exactly what happened to the DNC, and soon almost every mid-level staffer in the DNC was one of these asshats. Again, the guys
directing where the Clown Car was ultimately going were still in place, but the fringe had effectively ejected all the other Clowns from the vehicle. This meant, among other things, that their machinations had to get a lot more overt. With them having dominant positions in the DNC, they were actually able to dictate policy, and this led to the major gains the hard left made during the Obama administration. Naturally the Clown Car crashed firmly into a ditch in 2016, and, with the hard left gaining even more power in the mainstream apparatuses of the left since, it's only gotten more blatant.
They learned basically nothing from the experience, except for the fact that they were willing to fuck every single one of us to get their way in 2020, and what this ultimately broken attempt to rig an election may cost be the single most blatant act to date. Looking at how far they've gone, their fear of populism within the left itself makes perfect sense: they would sooner destroy everything than sacrifice even a single crumb of power for themselves, a level of hubris most of us can't even
imagine.
