This is a good piece:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...bernie/606688/
"Democratic insiders tend to be institutionalists. They are more likely than ordinary voters to care about the fact that Sanders hasn’t always been a registered Democrat, that he often criticizes party officials, and that he didn’t do more to help Clinton in 2016. Masket told me that many of the party bigwigs he interviewed resented Sanders for “being a spoiler for 2016” by supposedly undermining Clinton, and for “sticking his finger in the eye of the Democratic establishment.”
The other reason Democratic insiders disproportionately oppose Sanders is that party elites and the journalists with whom they interact tend to distrust radicals of any stripe. “A quarter-century covering national politics has convinced me that the more pervasive force shaping coverage of Washington and elections is what might be thought of as centrist bias, flowing from reporters and sources alike,” the former Politico editor John Harris recently observed."
Democrats seem to developing a wing of the party that is markedly conservative about institutional preservation. They decry anything they see as violating norms. Granted, in regard to Trump, they have good reason - he may be violating norms in a way that emboldens future presidents to act like autocrats.
But there's also a reverence for institutions, and it's built on some stale thinking that'd fit right at home in
National Review. Old school conservatism sought to "stand athwart" change, to keep things as they were, with only the smallest of incremental change from year to year.
When Democrats go nuts over Trump fooling around with the Justice Department, or thumbing his nose at Congressional oversight, they're doing something similar. They're asserting that the institutions are doing things the right way, and any challenge to that is invalid and dangerous. But at the same time, they'll acknowledge that our justice system is deeply fucked up and desperately in need of an overhaul. And everyone admits the current gridlock in government has rendered it dysfunctional.
These things don't change unless some radical shakeup occurs. Trump seems to be providing that shakeup. Instead of taking the conservative position that our justice system is properly running and should be protected, might the better response to Trump's efforts to delegitimize it be, "Yes, our justice system needs to be totally rebooted, but not the way Trump would reboot it... Here are ways we can strip it down to the studs and start all over, and it begins with less incarceration and less prosecutions of non-violent crime." Instead of sanctifying Congress, a group of people half comprised of craven political idiots, and crying that it's a victim of Executive bullying, might the better response be, "Enough with the endless politics. Congress, act like fucking adults. No more Benghazis, no more silly votes to repeal ACA, and no more purely political hearings where you waste time grandstanding. Shut up and work with the other two branches to get something done."
I think Trump might be a lost opportunity. He's taking a wrecking ball to things that need some significant repair. Instead of protecting these fucked up institutions, we should all agree they need to ripped apart and rebuilt. Just in a different way than he wants to rebuild them.
Let him disrupt and then swoop in and do the rebuilding. Lord knows he won't do it. It's hard work, and it requires discipline and foresight. And he can't build anything.
