Photo: Leonardo Munoz/AFP/Getty Images
Without any question, rank-and-file Democrats are furious right now. They are angry at the Trump administration, of course, for the multi-pronged attack underway on the public sector; on judges; on immigrants; on universities; on our allies; and on the U.S. Constitution. They are angry at a Republican Party that is egging on Trump, Elon Musk, Russell Vought, and the unruly gang of social-media trolls, Christian nationalists, and tech bros who have been empowered by the new administration, at the expense of congressional Republican authority. But most of all, they’re angry at their own party’s leaders for losing a winnable 2024 election and then retreating into confusion and fecklessness in dealing with emergency conditions that look a lot like every authoritarian takeover in modern world history.
Democrats are losing confidence in their party at historic rates, with Chuck Schumer’s abrupt decision to abandon a filibuster against a GOP/Trump spending bill becoming a real flash point. A recent Quinnipiac survey showed 49 percent of self-identified Democrats disapproving the job performance of the congressional party. The palpable unhappiness at the grassroots has led multiple observers to suggest that we may be on the brink of an intraparty revolt similar in intensity and significance to the tea-party movement that convulsed Republicans during the Obama administration, and which (many believe) paved the way for the equally angry MAGA movement that is now in charge of the country.
It’s true that the tea party of the right began with angry grassroots Republicans infuriated by Barack Obama’s 2008 election victory, the 44th president’s bold legislative agenda, and the GOP Establishment’s difficulties in countering it. And it did most strikingly manifest itself in a midterm primary upset of a congressional Republican leader, when a nobody named Dave Brat defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in his Virginia stomping grounds. We are now being told that Democrats in Congress who aren’t sufficiently “fighting” Trump could meet the same fate.
But the differences between the current moment and the one that sparked the tea-party movement are at least as striking as the similarities. The most important difference is that the uprising on the right was sharply ideological, and went far beyond demands for greater partisan combativeness. Its impetus was pretty clearly the bipartisan actions taken to mitigate the financial collapse that occurred late in the Bush administration, including the TARP bailout of investment institutions, but more importantly, the relief provided to regular folks who defaulted on mortgages.
The tea-party movement’s moment of birth was famously “Santelli’s Rant,” an on-air tirade by business telejournalist Rick Santelli aimed at the deadbeats turned freeloaders who took on unsustainable debt and expected their more responsible fellow citizens to rescue them with taxpayer dollars. This very pointed complaint metastasized into broad-based resentment of income redistribution and a near-libertarian belief that much of the modern welfare state violated the U.S. Constitution. While tea-party protests may have been aimed at TARP and then Obamacare, they really represented a revolt against the New Deal and Great Society legacy of beneficent government and a clear and powerful right turn for the Republican Party. Much of what the hard-core conservative House Freedom Caucus stands for came right out of the tea-party movement, along with some significant MAGA flourishes added by Donald Trump.
While progressives certainly believe the unprincipled character of party centrists has contributed materially to Trump’s return to power and the paralysis of congressional Democrats, it’s not accurate to say that the current wave of anger is ideological or the product of an aroused Left. As Politico notes, Democrats unhappy with their party are not at all united in any ideological diagnosis or prescription:
Despite the restive energy in the party’s progressive wing, the Democratic discontent does not seem to be centered around a desire to pull the party to the left or the right. Democrats cannot seem to agree on which direction the party should move in — recent Gallup polling found that 45 percent wanted the party to become more moderate, while 29 percent felt it should become more liberal, and 22 percent wanted it to stay the same.
I’m reasonably sure very few of the original tea-party activists wanted the GOP to become “more moderate.”
So if an ideological uprising is not in store for Democrats, how is the current wave of anguish likely to manifest itself, or to be resolved?
Congressional leadership, rather than garden-variety Democratic incumbents, seem the most likely target of grassroots rage going forward, which would mean a shakeup within the Senate and possibly the House leadership to show a willingness to deploy more aggressive tactics. But before that sort of revolt can take shape, the underlying conditions in the country could change the intraparty dynamics. If, for example, federal courts indeed slow down or stop the most outrageous actions of Team Trump, and particularly if the Supreme Court reestablishes constitutional “guardrails,” then perhaps Democrats will become less insistent that their elected leaders throw themselves upon the MAGA ramparts. And inversely, if Trump, Musk, and company intensify their authoritarian efforts and are not restrained by the courts (either because the judiciary surrenders or is simply ignored), the anger, fear, and panic among the Democratic grassroots could move onto the streets in open resistance instead of being focused on Democratic members of Congress who obviously can’t be expected to stop an extraconstitutional coup.
In a less apocalyptic scenario, the closer we get to the 2026 midterms the more likely it is that Democratic activists will be focused on winning general elections and flipping Congress rather than on purging Democratic incumbents who have failed to turn the tide. Already, small-dollar donors are pouring money into long-shot Democratic candidacies in two Florida special elections to fill House seats. The categorical imperative of busting up the Republican trifecta in Washington seems sure to deter Democrats from the sort of suicidal conduct that led tea-party bravos to back doomed Republican primary candidates like 2010 Delaware Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell or 2012 Missouri Senate nominee Todd Akin.
In general, we’re not likely to see left-of-center activists don tri-corner hats and scream about DINOs out of anguish at what Trump’s doing to their country and its institutions. As longtime tea-party observer (and sometimes supporter) David French noted, it’s not a good temperamental fit anyway:
[T]he Democratic Party is more of a party of institutions — including government institutions — than the Republican Party is now. This means they’re less likely to want a demolition than to urge a renovation. If the Tea Party revels in being the bull in the china shop and glories in the wreckage, the Democratic Party might want better inventory or new management, but it doesn’t want to trash the place.
Despite the alleged proclivity of Democrats to form “circular firing squads” and fall into “disarray,” the odds are good that they will focus more on the common enemy.
