The Democrats and Bernie

The mythology remains. Bernie Sanders is unelectable. Bernie Sanders is far left. In the end, center-right Democrats are even vowing to do all they can to sink him, to destroy him. What is going on? Why is this happening? Well. It helps to know the recent history of the Democratic Party. We need to understand where this venom is coming from. The dynamic is not that strange to students of recent history. In truth, the young Turks have become the old guard. And we have a new set of young Turks challenging the establishment.

The center-right conservative wing of the Democratic Party became ascendant in the 1980s after several generations of progressive politics and social services promised. That wing succeeded under the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. These started with a man of wealth running for the presidency well before the age of modern-day primaries. His conservative counterparts fought against him as hard and fast as their modern counterparts fight the rise of a progressive center-left coalition.

FDR was called all kinds of names by the elites of his age. Social Security was something out of the Communist Manifesto! And yes, he was also unelectable, far left and a red. He scared the conservative right of his era. Once elected, there was an actual plot, led by the industrialist of his age, to enact a coup. The coup never happened, and the people behind it were never prosecuted. Like Richard Nixon’s pardon decades later, this was about preserving the social order. Like always, people of means and connections walked away from what…