The Democratic Party is in deep trouble: The big question Sanders is at least trying to answer

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/20/the_democratic_party_is_in_deep_trouble_the_big_question_that_bernie_sanders_is_at_least_trying_to_answer/

Much of the American left is currently focused on the Democratic Party’s presidential primary in general, and the contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, in particular. But according to Vox’s Matt Yglesias, this laser-focus on the White House is a big mistake.

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Simply put, while Republicans have big money at the top, they have passionate rank-and-file support at the bottom, too. ... Not everyone within the GOP is the same, of course. And as the struggles between Tea Party extremists and Chamber of Commerce conservatives show, Republicans’ internal divisions can get mighty nasty. But even when they’re at each other’s throats, most Republicans on every side think of themselves as conservatives. They generally want the same things: the maintenance of a “traditional” social order, fewer regulations and, above all else, low taxes. When they differ, in other words, it’s usually not about ends but rather means.

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But organized labor in the U.S. is weaker than it’s been in over a century, if not longer; and as Democrats have tried to make up for labor’s diminishment by wooing socially liberal elements of the business class, they’ve made a more robust and unified defense of labor rights much more difficult. Today’s Democratic Party remains far more solicitous to organized labor than today’s Republican Party, to be sure. But the party’s relationship with labor is fraught and increasingly anachronistic. Their offer to slow labor’s decline only looks good because the other option is complete annihilation.

So because labor is weak, the Democratic Party cannot keep up with the GOP in races where institutional strength and organization can make the difference. Republicans can rely on churches and the NRA to make sure the GOP candidate wins the local county board race (or whatever). In low-profile races, the kind that embody Max Weber’s dictum that politics is the “strong and slow boring of hard boards,” Democrats can’t keep up. That’s the quandary that confronts the party on the local level and in the states. And it’s a question that many of the party’s leaders — Sen. Bernie Sanders and his “political revolution,” excluded — haven’t even tried to answer.