Rigged System: This Might Be the End of the Democratic Party

The Democratic Party has been in crisis mode since the election, though they’ve done an excellent job of hiding the internal panic from the public. Broke, lacking in public enthusiasm, and utterly failing to unite behind any agenda other than “We hate Donald Trump,” this is a party that can hear the tolling of the bells in the background every day of the week. For all their talk about taking back Congress next November, it’s hard to imagine who they think they’re actually fooling.

In fact, it’s not even clear what “taking back Congress” would actually mean, since it’s not quite clear what “being a Democrat” really means anymore. Half the party wants to throw away any vestiges that might remain of a pro-American, pro-capitalism, center-left agenda in favor of a wildly Communist strategy that will essentially make the term “Democrat” poisonous for a generation. The other half thinks it can succeed if it just panders a tiny bit more to minorities. And then there are one or two halfway sensible stalwarts who are begging the party to drop the extremist nonsense and actually start talking about things that make sense, like the economy and jobs. But so far, no one’s much listening to them.

And then, smack down in the middle of this erupting civil war, comes Donna Brazile’s stunning revelation: All those left-wing conspiracy theories last year about the Democratic primaries being rigged against Bernie Sanders? Yeah, they were all 100% true. Hillary Clinton essentially bought out the DNC in August 2015, ran through her primary challengers in a sham election, and then crowned herself the party’s nominee the next summer. And we remember all of a sudden that, no matter how cartoonishly corrupt the Clintons are made out to be by their critics…they’re actually worse than that in real life! If they were storybook villains, the author would be criticized for making them TOO evil to be believed.

President Trump is calling on the Justice Department to launch an inquiry into the Clinton campaign’s illegal and unethical collusion with the Democratic National Committee, but it doesn’t feel as though Attorney General Jeff Sessions has any interest in investigating Hillary’s crimes. Perhaps he’s seen this snake slither away from justice too many times to get bogged down in another round of fruitless hunting.

But regardless of whether anyone is actually held accountable to justice for this charade, the Democrats will be punished. Half of their supporters just said, “That’s it. No more.” It could take years for the party to build back the kind of trust they’ll need to get people motivated to vote for their candidates. And if they don’t make some serious changes – and now – even that distant window of opportunity could slam shut.