While it frustrates some, the simple fact is that within my almost 48 years of living and now 40 years of watching politics with serious interest, that the Democratic Party has overtaken an old self-styled moniker of the Republican Party by becoming the “Big Tent Party.”
These days, ask any reasonably informed Republican what his/her Party stands for and you will get some variation of “less government, lower taxes, and strict construction judges who will stop abortions and limit immigration while supporting law enforcement and the troops.” There are other Republican issues and sub-issues, mind you, but trust me that what was just in quotation marks is where every single Republican voter stands at the end of the day. Such is how Jeb Bush supporters, Marco Rubio supporters, Rick Perry supporters, Ted Cruz supporters and the like rallied behind Donald Trump in 2016, because the core issues mattered more than the perceived hollow core of the man who promised to fight for those issues if elected President of the United States.
The Democrats, on the contrary, are truly the Big Tent; ask any reasonably informed Democrat what the Party stands for, and you are likely to get answers as to what the Party “should” stand for–and those answers are oft divergent and sometimes discursive!
Yes, there will be a unified Democratic Party Platform enacted later this year, but the primary ideological battle of capitalism as status quo as opposed to more progressive aspects of Democratic socialism are so deeply held by so many voters that unless the eventual victor between the Final Four–Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren or Mike Bloomberg–taps a bona fide adherent of the opposite economic viewpoint as a VP running mate, there is a chance that some of these candidates followers will stay home come November. Which, again, is the difference between Republicans and Democrats as four years ago, one could tell that Messrs. “Low Energy” Bush, “Little Marco” Rubio, and “Lying Ted” Cruz as Donald Trump mockingly called them, had major beef with and/or despised the eventual Republican nominee, but their followers fell in formation just as soon as the die was cast for Trump.
Lest we Democrats forget…
