Normally, the Democrats exercise a degree of party discipline that Republicans can only envy. And their friends in the mainstream media love to highlight tensions within the Republican coalition while ignoring donkey conflicts. Within the party, "solidarity forever" isn't just a tune that union bosses lead their members in singing; it is a philosophy that, for instance, causes Democrat black political leaders to embrace unlimited illegal immigration, even as it harms the interests of the lower-skilled workers by suppressing wages.

The two and half years of TDS mass psychosis inside the Democratic Party since November 2016 are taking a toll. Trump Derangement Syndrome would already be recognized as a mental illness in an updated DSM-5 if the psychiatric profession were to magically shift into bias for conservatism instead for the Left, but even without the blessing of the shrinks, it is real, and it is taking a toll on the Democrats.

So what are we to make of this, coming from Mike DeBonis and Rachel Bade of the Washington Post, the most plugged in news source when it comes to the Democrats:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told her colleagues in a private meeting Thursday that she thought she had a deal this week with her longtime ally, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer: She would ensure passage of a more liberal border funding bill in the House, and he would back her up by persuading Democratic senators to fight for it. Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, she was blindsided. Nearly all Senate Democrats voted for a Republican-backed bill that kneecapped the House and marked the most embarrassing defeat for Pelosi in the six months since Democrats took over the chamber. "Schumer destroyed all our leverage on Wednesday by not being able to hold his people," said a senior House Democratic aide. Schumer (D-N.Y.), meanwhile, believed Pelosi failed to deliver on a deal of her own. After House moderates revolted Thursday, Democrats had to discard a plan to send the bill back to the Senate before an end-of-month deadline. "They're blaming everyone but themselves," said a senior Senate Democratic aide. Contrary to Pelosi's private assertions, the aide said, House leaders never asked Schumer to withhold votes in the Senate. The breakdown between Pelosi and Schumer revealed the extent of the raw divisions among congressional Democrats and raises the possibility of more skirmishes to come as Congress barrels toward funding and debt ceiling deadlines this fall. Democrats in both chambers agree they have to be in strategic lockstep to have any hope of besting President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The sudden, bitter dispute between the two most powerful Democrats in the country is particularly remarkable given their long history of cooperation — standing arm-in-arm through some of the most partisan moments in Trump's presidency, including the 35-day partial government shutdown.



Schumer and Pelosi before the break, on 06-26-19.

YouTube screen grab.

Trump and McConnell outsmarted the Dems on border funding, using the holiday recess as pressure to force a deal, as Democrats would be hoist with their own petard of decrying the conditions there and being seen as blocking the aid that would ameliorate them.

But I think something else is at work: deep frustration. Directing hatred for years at an object that refuses to roll over and die politically raises uncomfortable questions for the future. For the past half-century, Democrats' principal tactic to win support has been demonization of Republicans and conservatives as racists, fascists, mean child-haters. They have applied this tactic to Donald Trump, yet he not only remains ebulliently in office, but is succeeding in re-igniting the animal spirits of capitalism, and the hated free markets are delivering tangible improvements in the lives of their core constituents, those on the lower end of the income scale.

With the presidential field going far left, embracing policies that have very little support (open borders and free medical care for illegals, for instance), a sense of dread is spreading among the elders like Schumer and Pelosi, who see their party captured by extremists that repel majority support.

All of this before John Durham issues indictments in the Russia Hoax scandal, and DOJ I.G. Michael Horowitz reveals further evidence and possible criminal referrals in the biggest political scandal in American history.