Waging War on the Left Within the Democratic Party Won’t Work
Is it a good idea to destroy the rising socialist current within the Democratic Party, as many centrist pundits are now counseling? Just ask the Labour Party, which waged war on Jeremy Corbyn and the Left and is now in complete disarray.
Five years ago, the UK’s Labour Party waged war on its left wing and got exactly the kind of leader that establishment centrists dream of getting here, Keir Starmer. The results have been disastrous. (Victoria Jones / PA Images via Getty Images)
Pundits close to the Democratic establishment have a new term to fling at the left-wing insurgents they want to disappear: “factionalism.”
Matthew Yglesias now constantly attacks socialists and their leading figures on the basis that they believe in “factionalism and anti-partyism,” or have “a whole factional project,” “factional talking point[s],” a “passion for factionalism.” At first, he took up this line over the Graham Platner candidacy, but now Yglesias uses it to refer to any attempt by the Left to replace establishment-friendly incumbents by beating them in primary races.
Center for American Progress President and CEO Neera Tanden agreed. Platner should have been solely attacking his Republican opponent, “not attacking Dems in factional fights,” she tweeted. Socialists had to be stopped from “giving away the Michigan Senate seat for factional reasons the way they tried (and likely succeeded in) giving away the Maine seat,” warned former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum.
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