Why Did the Tea Party Fail?
There's an interesting Washpo piece that argues the Bernie Sanders movement may be scotching the Dems' golden opportunity to exploit Trump's unpopularity and GOP squabbling in Congress to regain the House and perhaps even the Senate in 2018. It would seem the Senate is likelier with only 3 seats needed to regain control, but the Dems have a disparate number to defend (25, including 2 "independent" seats), including in states which are red. To give a brief sample, the seats in Missouri and Indiana were heavily favored to go or stay red in 2012 when the GOP nominees made political blunders. Kasich (OH) and Scott (FL) are term-limited governors who would be strong candidates against Dem incumbents, and the GOP in deep-red Montana and ND might be able to switch those seats. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and perhaps Michigan, where the GOP has fared well in recent elections, are also vulnerable. The only GOP seat that the Hill listed in its list for a possible flip is Heller in Nevada.
The House is possible with 24 seats to flip, but the Cook Political Report suggests for that to happen, the Dems would need to flip seats currently rated leaning or likely GOP. On paper, it seems to sound highly possible; almost all Presidents (except Bush 43) in recent history have seen the opposition party gain seats. You have a squabbling, unproductive Congressional GOP majority and Trump will likely lead into next fall's election with the lowest midterm ratings in recent history. But there are a number of signs, i.e., a recent stretch of special elections swept by the GOP in the midst of all this discontent. Polls show that Trumpkins remain steadfast; my personal opinion is, and has been, that it will be on the state of the economy over the coming year; if we run a reasonably growing economy with continued decent job numbers, the GOP's chances are good, especially if they can wrangle out health care and tax reforms. I am concerned, though, about Trump's erratic behavior (including bashing and/or threatening the special prosecutor, the Speaker or the Senate Majority leader), his provocative rhetoric on foreign policy and/or trade. It's almost impossible to anticipate everything that could be wrong over the next 15 months, but just to pose speculative example, a global stock market crash, a successful military or terrorist attack which gets blamed on a failure in the Trump Administration, some unexpected findings from the Special Prosecutor, etc/
But the Washpo piece really tries to contrast the Bernie Sanders movement to the Tea Party.of 2010 and suggests the rapidly consolidated position of nationalizing health care (e.g., Medicare for all), and points out that the Berniekins will crash and burn just like the Tea Party. The author points out that outside the pto-single-payer left-wing of Democrats, government-run health care is only favored by about a fifth of the electorate. I do think the author is right, that the response to the failure of ObamaCare is not to double-down on government intervention. Populism and socialism has been tried and failed in POTUS and other federal elections. I know that many Berniekins feel that Sanders would have beaten Trump going away, citing blowout polls.
It's difficult arguing hypotheticals. I think the early polls reflected Sanders largely getting a free ride because Clinton didn't want to alienate his supporters. (To what extent that was successful is debatable.) And none of the Republicans, including Trump, went after Sanders. Now why do you think they didn't do that? They weren't shy about going after Clinton. The old saw goes, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." So Sanders was a fresh but old face being polls against the two most reviled Presidential candidates in modern history. Let's point out Sanders lost to Clinton over the primary by a wide margin (he barely topped 40%), and Trump eventually won the GOP nod despite radioactive unfavorable numbers.
You have the obvious example of Mike Dukakis, who at one point had a huge lead over Bush 41 but lost in a blowout election; there were various things like struggling to answer a question over his reaction to wife Kitty's prospective rape and murder. Sanders would have his own "Kitty movements". Sanders was manifestly unfit to be Commander-in-Chief, going beyond Dukakis' stupid photo op in a tank. The GOP would have wiped the floor with Sanders as soft on terrorism and against a strong national defense. Sanders has had a long career as a professional politician; Trump would have gone after him as part of the unaccomplished elite with no Congressional base behind his platform. Not to mention everything he did, said or wrote (including his infamous honeymoon in the USSR) would have been scrutinized and attacked. And if you don't know how quickly a candidate's fortunes can reverse, recall how the GOP blew easy 2012 Senate wins in MO and IN because of single soundbites on women's issues. Trump would have run, in a change year election, as the true outsider, not to mention he had co-opted Sanders' positions on trade and immigration. Sanders is a classic tax-and-spender. Sasha Stone discussed aspects of these points and others here, arguing Sanders had no chance.
But I'm more interested in discussing the failure of the Tea Party and the comparisons between the movements. Bernie Sanders was running an ideological campaign based on income inequality and more, not less government, even as ObamaCare is failing, the national debt has doubled since Bush, and entitlement are inadequately funded.
The Tea Party was always a tough sell, because cutting taxes and regulations always brought powerful special interests. Every time even modest senior entitlement reforms are suggested, AARP mobilizes the politically active senior citizen base. And there is always the problem of where you draw the line of limited government--and the seemingly paradoxical action of running for a position your ideology discredits. I think the Tea Party got co-opted by the anti-immigrants and other Big Government conservatives opposing Obama. The organization also resisted being partisan, actively trying to recruit Democrats as well as Republicans. No signature agenda per se; how else do we explain how the Godfather of ObamaCare, Mitt Romney, got nominated just 2 years later?
