The Democratic Party and the rise of Sanders candidates?

After last night, it is worth taking a moment out to consider the growing storyline that the Democratic Party is becoming the party of Bernie Sanders.  Andrew Gillum, in Florida, is the story of the day, but this story has been gaining momentum as a narrative, particularly since Ocasio-Cortez.  Just a couple of observations for the morning about this narrative.

First, remember that a congressional delegation will mostly consist of returning incumbents, and transforming a party requires change over a long time, if you don't get the sitting incumbents to move with you.

Are those sitting incumbents Sanders-partisans?  A bunch will say they'd like single-payer, 'n such, but Obama would have liked single-payer.  Willing to waste time and energy on something that has zero chance of passage?  That's another matter, and whether or not any of the sitting incumbents have decided that they'd take up Sanders's agenda if they had a working majority?  That's another question.  It's also irrelevant, at least until 2021.

Next, these are candidates.  We don't necessarily know what supposedly antiestablishment-movement candidates will do once in office.  Marco Rubio was originally touted as a great hope of the Tea Party, when he ran in 2010.  Then, he became an establishment guy, just by being open to serious immigration reform.  What will these Sanders-backed candidates do if they win?  We don't really know.  Ask the Tea Party what they think of Rubio now!

All of this points to the general problem of trying to build narratives about trends from a few anecdotes.  Right now, there are a few anecdotes.  That's not a real trend.  Yet.  (?)

Finally, as a longtime Sanders detractor, let me remind everyone that it's nice to have people who actually think about policy.  Ocasio-Cortez, for example, doesn't.  She is disturbingly like Sanders in that sense.  A universal jobs guarantee.  O....Kay.  How's that supposed to work?  Has anyone thought through the details on that, or are all of these people "details-schmetails" people?  You can't shouldn't have an ideological movement in which everyone is the "details-schmetails" person and nobody is the real details person.  If the movement is built around an opposition to having a details person, we already have one of those.

Its leader is Donald Trump.

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