The Democratic Party’s political class has developed a rote formula over the last decade: ignore rather than channel discontent among the party’s rank-and-file voters, prevent competitive primaries where those voters can act on their dissatisfaction, and then hope to eke out general election victories on a wave of voter disgust with the Republican Party’s freakshow nominees.
This isn’t just a fleeting tactic. This is now The Formula Of Democratic Politics™, one with mixed results. In 2016, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) publicly bragged that The Formula would result in flipping enough moderate voters to secure a victory, just before The Formula’s epic failure handed Donald Trump the presidency.
Four years later, though, The Formula seemed to work — Democrats united to quash the primary against the quasi-incumbent Joe Biden, and Trump’s horrific first term allowed Biden to eke out a win with a flaccid campaign based on a meaningless platitude about “the soul of America.”
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