STEVE AND COKIE TALK SENSE: ARE ANY DEMOCRATS LISTENING?

I was just made aware of a week-old column co-written by Steve and Cokie Roberts.  I am posting a key part of it now, because it makes so much sense (and, not incidentally, because it coincides with so much of what I’ve been writing since last year’s elections):

Does anybody here remember Blanche Lincoln? She was a two-term senator from Arkansas, a moderate Democrat who prospered in a red state by defying liberal power brokers like big labor.

The unions and ultra-left pressure groups went after her big-time in 2010, backing a primary challenge by Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter. She survived the primary — barely — but suffered mortal wounds in the process, and lost badly in the fall to Republican John Boozman. 

We thought of Lincoln as the purist wing of the Democratic Party re-emerged this spring and threatened to run primary opponents next year against senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Their sin: daring to support President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch.

As one of those purist pressure groups, We Will Replace You, said in their manifesto: “The next crucial step is escalating our demands, and demonstrating that we won’t accept anything less than full opposition — by showing Democrats just how many people are willing to back primary challenges to Democratic collaborators and enablers of Trump.”

This harassment is beyond stupid. It’s suicidal.

Democrats are struggling to win elections and have lost control of both Congress and the White House. Trump won West Virginia by 67 percent, North Dakota by 62 percent and Indiana by 56 percent.

The only Democrats who could possibly hold Senate seats in those states are ones like Manchin, Heitkamp and Donnelly: moderates who separate themselves from the rigid tenets of liberal theology. Lincolnizing them, purging them as heretics, would have only one result: making it easier for Trump and his congressional allies to retain power.

The math is undeniable and unrelenting: Democrats cannot take back the White House or Congress simply by building up large majorities in Brooklyn and Boston. Politics is always about addition, not subtraction. Condemning moderates as “collaborators” and “enablers” will condemn the party to permanent minority status.

Amazing, isn’t it?

Democrats hugely benefited by the disaster Republicans brought on themselves with Tea Party purist candidates like, among others, Richard Mourdock, Sharron Angle, Ken Buck – take-no-prisoners hard rightists who displaced electable Republicans and handed Democrats what clearly were winnable senate seats.

Yet here they are, doing exactly the same thing – with what most likely will be exactly the same result.

Democrats are up excrement’s creek without a paddle in 2018.

-Republicans hold a 45 seat bulge in the house (238-193), which will be extremely hard to overcome.

-And though the Republican Senate majority is very slight – 52 to 48 – of the 34 seats up for grabs in 2018, 26 are held by Democrats, with 10 in states Donald Trump won.

If, in addition to that crippling disparity, left wing purists take down three centrist Democrat Senators in states that voted heavily Republican last year and replace them with hard leftists, how do Democrats go anywhere but appreciably downward?

Mr. and Ms. Roberts are offering Democrats advice of extreme value.  Too bad for them if they stop at “extreme” and run with it.