Wouldn't you say that the GOP went batshit crazy, not because they dutifully elected moderates, but because they had to keep adjusting to the far-right to keep the Tea-Baggers and fascists from breaking off to the right?
If you'd agree with this (and I find it difficult to argue with) then wouldn't the threat of losing the party's extreme flank be louder than dutifully electing a moderate?
I do agree that the GOP ended up prioritizing short term maintenance of it's voting base. I also agree that it utterly fucked them over. I don't think it necessarily had to go that way. At one point they were consciously planning to move left on immigration and try and capture segments of the Latino vote and abandon their right flank. They didn't because that flank immediately organized in response, and was well healed by other interest groups that leveraged the general ignorance of the poorly educated white voters of the GOP to push their corporate interests.
IMHO the major difference between GOP and Democratic corporatism is largely that the republicans use ignorance to maintain full throttle corporatism and the democrats are more nuanced and technocratic about it. In general I think you can see this in what particular industries tend to support one party or the other.
The problem here with the analogy that you are drawing here, is that communism isn't a flank of the democratic party, communists aren't organized like the tea party us, and it certainly doesn't have the monetary support.
Now the social democratic wing, which is realistically where I would be operating in the democratic party, has potential long term to shift the party. I don't think that it is necessarily required that I oppose Hillary in the General to push the interests of that wing. Strong primary challenges are just as dangerous to the new democrat wing as trump is.
And quite frankly I prefer the new democrats over whatever that nonsense is going on in the GOP right now.
But wouldn't it be more effective, again, to make them chase your opinion than obediently decide between the two of them?
It is more effective if they chase my vote (or more accurately the block of votes that I'm in). The difference is that my block isn't an essential block for the democratic party historically. I would rate our block as influential but not essential. You can see that in the little gets Bernie managed to wrestle out of the party for his endorsement.
The Uneducated white vote ended up being electorially powerful enough to fuck over a bunch of establishment republicans in their primaries (including the at one point head of the republicans in the house) which is capable of forcing the party to bow to their whims. We don't have that power yet, we have to build and organize.
It'll be at least 8-16 years of hard work before we can really start trying to play that level of strategy, I do think the progressive wing it on the rise with elizabeth warren, bernie, the infrastructure bernie has made to push primary candidates, and the energized young voters who were exposed to ideas in their political development that aren't really something older voters will consider.
I really think I can do something to help that movement, but it'll be damned hard.
@Frollein @LV-GUCCI-PRADA-FLEX
Frollein is right, I'm taken.
My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.