Over the course of the next few months, GOP leadership will be meeting in secret, in an attempt to make sense of the obvious: The not-so-Grand, very Old Tea Party Republicans will be meeting to try to understand what anyone who believes in equality for classes, gender, and race has already known for decades.
Republican Party leadership will gather in old world-style conference rooms, sipping Champaign and puffing on big cigars, scratching their heads while they attempt to figure out why their billionaire mad money was not able to buy our democracy.
You can expect some billionaire Republican donor like Foster Friess or Sheldon Adelson to mention that their state-gerrymandering plan did work, in that it allowed them to keep control of the House of Representatives. In between the sips of Champaign and the puffs on their Cohibas, they will have a few laughs at how ridiculous the Democrats look in allowing state Republican governors and legislatures to dilute Democrat votes out of existence by re-drawing district lines that make it impossible for the GOP to ever lose the House.
A few of the billionaire losers may even talk about how Donald Trump’s idea of starting a revolution in America: The 1% against the 99% is a realistic possibility for them. It may bring them comfort to know that billionaires in 3rd world Banana Republics do it all the time.
But after that Cohiba smoke clears, they will have to face the reality that Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News have all been so successful in building a “coalition of crazy” around the GOP brand, that there is no easy solution to rebuild their demented dinosaur party of fringe oddballs.
But when the sparse sanity in that room refocuses on reality, here is what they will come to see about their party: It has become the fringe crazy versus the less fringe crazy. The fight between those two camps is a conflict that should keep the GOP off center and impotent in Senate races and presidential races for at least one more presidential cycle.
So what should do the Democrats do during this time of leadership chaos within the Republican Party? The answer is simple: They continue building their strength within America’s labor movement. They reward them instead of ignoring them like the last time around. They begin appointing women, Asians, Latino and African Americans to judicial positions and political leadership positions in a way that fairly and honestly and statistically reflects their new and advancing participation in politics. For example, if 10 federal judges are to be appointed, then 4 or 5 of those federal judges need to reflect the demographics of a rapidly changing America.
And the same should hold true with cabinet positions, as well as with our political administration from top to bottom.
Just as important will be the need to restructure the leadership decision makers within the Democratic Party. There is absolutely no room for the “Blue Dog Democrats” who will gladly accept financial and structural support from the DNC, and then vote with the Republicans on virtually every important social and political policy decision.
Currently, Democrats do not have to endure the suffering that is taking place in those posh billionaire clubs where Champaign flows freely, but new and progressive ideas about change don’t flow at all. Democrats are not in the awful position of having to answer to the hate-filled rantings of the moonbat, clownish characters who make up their disappearing base.
But I promise you, if this Obama administration this time doesn’t keep its promises, if they again ignore and marginalize the coalitions that again put them in office – Again, gave them another chance – labor, lawyer groups, environmental groups; then the Democratic Party will suffer no less than what we are seeing in the GOP without a unified base.
Because I will promise you this: The well-adjusted thinkers and strategists remaining within the GOP; the ones who are serious leaders and who weren’t invited to those posh conference rooms with has-been billionaires like Donald Trump; those leaders are thinking clearly, and they are devising plans to attract the Democrats’ new base to their side. Don’t assume they can’t do it.
