The NY Times didn't mince words. The progressives trying to overthrow the corporate Democratic establishment are “the party’s ascendant militant wing.”



Clearly, The New York Times isn’t happy about progressives challenging the status quo.

The article ignored the catastrophic failures of the Democratic establishment that has brought the party to the brink of ruin, and instead focused on the inability of the progressive "militants" to have reshaped the world in six months.

Before people cast judgements they should recognize that this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Before the garment-rending and hand-wringing go too far, Democrats and pundits would do well to focus their eyes a little lower on the ballot. In special elections for state and local offices, progressive insurgents aren’t just coming close — they are winning and sending a message to the establishment of both parties.

...To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the insurgency’s death are premature. In reality, it has just begun to build.

It wasn't just the climactic destruction of the Democratic Party at the ballot box, but also the neglect and starvation of the grassroots that has left the Democratic establishment both delegitimized and vulnerable.



A wide range of progressive groups are involved on the local level, but Our Revolution has emerged as the nationwide coordinator. Within the past year, progressives associated with Sanders or Our Revolution have become party chairs in Colorado, Nebraska, Washington and Wyoming...

Our Revolution Texas is also encouraging progressives to become precinct chairs in their local Democratic Party chapters. The party is so hollowed out in the state that taking it over is mainly a matter of showing up.

“In probably half of the precincts in Texas, there’s no precinct chair,” Hightower says. “So we’re going to fill as many of those as we can.” The precinct chairs elect the county chairs, who in turn choose the state party chair.

Any party that is already so discredited by failure, and so negligent of the lower-levels of power, is vulnerable to an organization that is this patient and determined.

Progressives have a plan.

Whether this uprising by the party’s progressive wing is a false start or the start of a revolution, it is without doubt the most serious fissure in the party since its centrist and leftist wings came to blows over the Vietnam War in 1968—the year that Shirley Chisholm was elected to Congress as an anti-war Democrat.

The other thing to keep in mind is that mobilizing a progressive wave won't be as hard as you might think, because progressives won't have to change people's minds.

“It’s not that Democrats turned right-wing. They quit voting. If they hear candidates and political organizations talking about the things they care about, they’ll respond.”

- Jim Hightower

Trump’s victory was literally made possible by millions of former Democratic voters who were convinced by his extended-length rants against bankers and other assorted “globalists” and his praise for universal health care.

Some of these disaffected Democrats voted for Trump. But an even larger number simply didn’t vote at all.

In a January study of about 3,600 nonvoters who took part in a SurveyMonkey poll, FiveThirtyEight writer Harry Enten observed that 35 percent of these individuals self-identified as Democrats, while 32 percent said they were Republicans and 33 percent said they had no party affiliation. Almost certainly, the people who stayed home leaned even further leftward.

...

In a study of turnout in the 2014 midterm elections, 68.5 percent of people with annual household incomes less than $30,000 did not vote.

...Of the about 231 million Americans who could have voted last year, about 92 million of them decided not to.

Just imagine what might happen if political candidates were to start speaking to the economic concerns of working people. What would happen if 20 million of them turn up at the polls unexpectedly?