https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/n ... ms-w521753
It's all in the name of winning, of course! The kind of winning the Democrats have been doing, presumably, over the last four election cycles – when the party and its strategic wizards presided over a massive loss of power at local, state, and federal levels. Nevertheless, the strategy used over that catastrophic stretch is by and large the same one the party is following this year by, among other things, meddling in local elections (which the Republican Party, as a matter of policy, does not do). "I hope for a wave" in 2018, Nancy Pelosi told the Austin American-Statesman in February, "but I believe you make your wave." Which is exactly what the grown-ups in the Democratic leadership were doing, she said, despite all those annoying catcalls and complaints from the left. "This is a cold-blooded, strategic, focused campaign to win the Congress for the American people," Pelosi said. "We don't waste time. We don't waste energy. We don't waste resources."
They also don't win elections – even with a fast-rising demographic advantage and an electorate that leans more and more leftward in its views. The one thing the Democratic leadership has done undoubtedly well in recent years is divide its own members into warring factions. Which is a kind of achievement, when you consider that the Democrats in 2018 are arguably more ideologically unified than ever before. For all the ballyhooed "divisions" between the progressive and centrist wings of the party, they have little to do with where the party actually stands on policy issues. In the '00s, the Democrats had bitter disagreements over such consequential matters as the Iraq War and abortion rights. The left and center-left still differ on trade policy, and on whether to push for single payer or opt for an Obamacare revamp. But that's about it, as the New America Foundation recently found in a survey of Democrats: The rest of the disagreements are largely matters of tone and strategy – and long-smoldering factional resentments that party leaders can't seem to stop fanning.
If only it didn't matter so much. But in a moment of rising authoritarianism, with democracy itself at stake, the Democrats are the only hope our political system offers for peacefully turning back the Trumpian tide. If the party blows its chance at a House majority, there will be even less of a check on Trump for the last two years of his first term. And so we can only hope against hope – the great "we," that is, that constitutes 60 percent of anti-Trump Americans – that the favorable political currents this year are too strong for even the Democratic Party to drown itself. At this point, it's a thin, wistful hope: Please, Democrats, don't blow this one completely. And it's all we've got.