After 8 years of exploiting and enflaming the grievances of identity politics, the Democratic Party is being eaten by the monster they rode to power.

Something new is happening before our eyes. Radicals are completing a takeover of the Democratic Party. Sure, there’s been a lot of mockery among conservatives about hyperventilating Democrats. Pundits point out the obvious: that Democrats screaming that Trump is illegitimate deliver no positive message for working class voters who want jobs and that mobs in black masks are not appealing. Such analyses fall short.

Radicals don’t need to be a majority – they never are. They dominate through mob violence, media manipulation and threats. They are now dominating Democrat politicians, not allowing them to “normalize.”

The Los Angeles Times: Democrats in Congress began the year less defiant, with a more tentative, case-by-case approach to an untested new president. They were ready to work with Trump, they said, if he met them halfway. Democratic senators confirmed a few of Trump’s Cabinet nominees without much fuss. Then their base erupted.

The Wall Street Journal: Leftist throngs have been gathering outside Mr. Schumer’s residence in Brooklyn, N.Y., demanding that the Senate minority leader “get a spine” and oppose President Trump on everything. That probably isn’t his natural inclination. Mr. Schumer once said that a “pause” in Syrian immigration “may be necessary,” and after the election he declared himself ready to “work with” Mr. Trump. But now he has yielded to the noisy crowd.

The always insightful John Hinderaker has noticed something is up in, “What Part Of ‘You Lost’ Don’t Liberals Understand?”

The Democrats need to understand that when you lose an election, the other guys get to take office. You don’t stamp your feet and demand that they quit. (At) a town meeting conducted last night by Congressman Tom McClintock in Roseville, California. Liberal activists … behaved so … threateningly that the Congressman had to be escorted from the hall by armed policemen. Another disgusting moment in the history of liberalism, but this is what I find mystifying: “I can no longer just sit back. … These people need to understand, we want them out,” said Vietnam War veteran Lon Varvel, referring to Trump and McClintock. “We want them out”? There is a mechanism for that. It is called an election. In fact, McClintock is … was re-elected in November, with more than double the vote total of his nearest Democratic challenger.

Hinderaker may be mystified by what he persists in calling liberal behavior because he mislabels it. These Democrats are not liberal. They are radical. These people are not just stamping their feet, they are knocking Trump supporters unconscious and beating them with clubs. They are trained, organized and well financed political agitators.

(Screen grab from YouTube)

As for abandoning identity politics? Forget it. Look at the contenders to lead the DNC – they seem to be listening to Bernie Sanders’s black press secretary, Symone Sanders, who told CNN, “we don’t need white people leading the DNC.” We have a white female candidate who says her job is to tell other whites to shut up. One leading contender is Keith Ellison, antisemitic, a former Nation of Islam Black Muslim, with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. The weirdest part of all is that Ellison is backed by Chuck Schumer.

It seems like a parody, until you admit the radicals are ascendant, and it is no joke.

The Democrats will have to find a lot of political courage and resolve if they want to try a course correction. The radicals are professional bullies. They believe in what they call “direct action,” that is, coercive violence. They demand no compromise. They are awash with money. They are professionally trained, ten thousand alone by Obama’s Organizing for America foundation. The radical agenda, now the Democratic Party’s agenda, is ideologically driven to destroy all normalcy in our government.

We see Democrat leadership and the media settling in for permanent demonization of America’s heartland, endless lies about Trump, more divisiveness. It’s easy to say this will become tiresome and lose impact, but that is not inevitable. Lies repeated often enough create their own reality, as President Bush learned. President Trump is correct in countering every one of them, and creating the counter narrative that Democrats are hopelessly dishonest.

Democrats’ heated rhetoric and resultant political violence is designed to provoke a law and order reaction. What the Democrats hope for is an over-reaction by the Trump administration, one that could turn the tide of public opinion against him. They’re all ready with their soundbites on “constitutional crisis.” (See my column, Democrats Find a Use for Violence.)

Republican lawmakers now fear for the personal safety of themselves, their families, and their staff. The GOP House Chair invited Rep. Dave Reichert, a former county sheriff famous for apprehending the most dangerous serial killer in American history, to brief them on safety measures inside the halls of Congress and at constituent meetings.

So far as I have seen, not one single Democrat has condemned the bloody attacks on Republicans.