THE DEMOCRAT PARTY HAS A TRUTH PROBLEM.

The latest salvo in the tussle between the communist and corporatist wings of the Donkey Party comes from Ralph Brauer, complete with Lenin cap in his portrait, asserting "The Democratic Party Has a History Problem."  It's more complaining about the Donks' unproductive post-mortem evaluation of their presidential loss.  "Party leadership needs to study and learn from what the Wall Street wing has cost in terms of lost elections and the increasing tilt of the playing field."

Comrade Brauer buries the lede.  "Today most of us would stumble over trying to define the Democratic Party in one sentence, but one can easily do that for the Republicans—less taxes, less government. With the midterms six months away, this lack of a unified message already has the faithful worried."

The Republicans don't always deliver on those objectives, particularly when they hold governing majorities beholden to their rent-seekers.  The Democrats, on the other hand: the unified message is "more taxes and more government" and their Morale Conditioners, including Comrade Brauer, do everything in their power to sugar-coat it as soaking oligarchs or warning constituents that People. Will. Die. if they don't get their way.

Comrade Brauer, however, would rather deflect to a claim that the major parties put up unpopular candidates for national office, which a majority of eligible voters reject.

Given the pro-Wall Street leanings of both parties, we should not be surprised that we have essentially been governed by a minority. Since 2000, the winning presidential candidate has only averaged 30.18% of the voting-eligible population. Today, only 27% of voters identify with either party, while 45% identify as independents. That is the lowest total ever for Democrats.

Low voter participation has long been a thing.  Didn't Ronald Reagan fail to garner a majority of eligible voters in his 1984 wipeout of Walter Mondale and his historic token running mate?  Moreover, to many voters, things might not suck as much as the Morale Conditioners of both parties would like to have us believe?  "Recall, dear reader, lower participation is a marker of general voter satisfaction.  The major parties notice when the outsider parties get votes."  Moreover, there's this subtext in political science to the effect that maybe it's better for some voters to stay home.  "Normatively, is it better or worse for local politics that the allegedly low-knowledge voters generally don't participate in local elections?"

Not that it matters to Comrade Brauer.

A good part of the answer will depend on whether people like Ken Martin continue to support the Wall Street wing of the party or realize what that support has cost in terms of lost elections and the increasing tilt of the playing field. What is clear is that the drastically tilted playing field has become extremely volatile. One lesson history teaches us is that if inequalities are allowed to fester, things can get very ugly. During the discontent of the Gilded Age, lynchings averaged 150 per year between 1881 and 1900, or one every 2.4 days. Another 1,400 people perished in riots, in the most violent three decades in our history. All of us can see and fear the growling, anvil-shaped clouds that threaten to darken our lives, as they did over a century ago.

Now I'm confused. Were those lynchings revolutionary or reactionary violence?

Whether any of that will make Democrats of any wing more favorably disposed to lower taxes or less government?  I doubt it.  That leaves me no choice but to stand with Jennifer Grossman as quoted by John Stossel in favor of lower taxes and less government in These United States,  "the first nation in history founded on the inalienable rights of the individual. It recognized that man is not a sacrificial animal for the collective, the king or the majority."  No matter how much Comrade Brauer wishes 'twere so.