I'm ambiguous about the Deminvade strategy that Sanders, Our Revolution, Justice Democrats, etc. have pursued. I understand the desire to take over an existing party structure that has a protected and embedded status in almost every state vs. creating a new third party. On the other hand, I see the current "leaders" of the Democrats as unlikely to surrender power. And we all know how deeply corrupted they are at both the personal and systemic levels. I can easily see them imploding like the Whigs in the mid-19th Century.

That said, the Republicans have handed Democrats a cause that could resurrect the Dems as a true people's party, should they be willing to take it up. Last night the Senate Republicans passed their doomsday tax reform cut bill, one designed to devastate poor and middle income folks, and transfer trillions of dollars to the wealthiest people and corporations in America. I call it a doomsday bill because it designed to explode the budget deficit, paving the way for further cuts in the social safety net, including the a program for drastic cuts to social security, medicare and medicaid and well as other forms of government assistance essential to the economy and the general welfare.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said recently that he wants Republicans to focus in 2018 on reducing spending on government programs. Last month, President Trump said welfare reform will “take place right after taxes, very soon, very shortly after taxes.” [...] You also have to bring spending under control. And not discretionary spending. That isn't the driver of our debt. The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said this week. While whipping votes for a GOP tax bill on Thursday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) attacked “liberal programs” for the poor and said Congress needed to stop wasting Americans' money.

Cuts to other essential programs such as NIH, CDC, FEMA, EPA, the Forest Service wildfire fighting units, and government funded research, etc. are also likely on the GOP's chopping block. Anything but spending for the Military Industrial Complex will be fair game.

These cuts will cause tremendous pain to middle class and poor Americans, and with a looming stock market crash only a matter of when, not if, with our current wealth and income inequality we may soon incur economic suffering not seen since the Great Depression.

Democrats are effectively another arm of the oligarchy. Call them the "Compassionate Courtiers for Economic Royalists" party, for that is what they are. Obviously, Sanders and other progressive Democrats would like to push out the corporatist, neoliberal faction that currently controls the party's levers of power, as Jeremy Corbyn managed with the Labour Party in the U.K.. I'm skeptical that Sanders and his team can pull it off, but if he does, it will occur only if progressive activists embrace a frontal assault on the Democratic Party Establishment. And among the many other things progressives who are wedded to a Deminvade strategy should be doing, one of them is this:

Demand a Pledge From All Democratic Candidates To Repeal Republican Tax Reform I would add to that a demand for the following pledges by all Dem cabdidates: Enact Single Payer health care, or Medicare for All, as it has been called, at the state or national level. Free In-state Tuition Student Debt Relief or Amnesty Increased Taxes on Income earned in Excess of $150,000 (i.e., income of any kind whether wages, salary or from investments with rates increasing progressively as income rises) Paper Ballots, Not E-Voting and No Reliance on Corporate Cash or Big Money Donors

And by every candidate, I mean every candidate for state or national office. If anyone hedges or refuses to sign onto these demands, progressives should make it very clear they will stay home and not vote for the standard Republican Lite fare the party establishment has been serving up for decades now. It also means running candidates who adopt these positions in primaries against incumbents and other party establishment preferred candidates.

Absent a firm unified commitment to forcing candidates to adopt a progressive agenda or face being primaried and/or abandoned by progressive voters in the general election. If Deminvade has any chance of succeeding, this is the bare minimum progressive activists working within the Democratic Party should be demanding as the price for their donations, GOTV efforts and other campaign activities, and for their votes on election day for Democratic candidates at every level.

I'll be honest. I'm not particularly optimistic that progressive activists can take power away from the current Dem establishment. But they certainly won't succeed with half-measures or compromises. The neoliberal faction a/k/a the "New Democrats" will not back down or offer any compromises. They have shown that much already. Despite corporate and big money donors abandoning them in droves, they are wedded to a system from which man, many of them have benefited to the extent many earn comfortable living far in excess of the traditional party base, with the ones at the top moving on up to become multi-millionaires.

And we can't be certain that any particular Dem will follow through on their promises, even of they take the pledge (see, e.g., Obama's refusal to eliminate the Bush tax cuts). However, the more who do, the greater the chance that real progressives will assume office and work for a people's platform rather than the current system that gives the oligarchs whatever they want at the expense of everyone else.

I wish them well, but they have a lot to do if their Deminvade internal coup or "revolution" has any chance to succeed.