Are Democrats Having a Tea Party Moment?

White hot rage born of fear birthed the Tea Party movement. If Democrats go down the same path, is the country doomed?

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I remember the moment well. It was the height of the Affordable Care Act debate in Congress, and the country was caught between two different realities.

Democrats were elated at the prospect of finally addressing their holy grail - the nation’s health care system. Buoyed by control of both the House and the Senate, along with the rise of a once-in-a-lifetime rock star politician, Democrats had the wind at their backs and were spiking the football in the end zone.

Not only had they won and taken control of the levers of government, they were also advancing their long restrained goals of expanding government’s role in health care. They believed they were on the verge of a new era in American politics. The first Black President, Barack Obama, had restructured the American political landscape, and demographic shifts seemed to be leading them towards a permanent majority. “Demographics is destiny!” Became the rallying cry.

Republicans were despondent, losing hope and feeling as if they were drowning in a country they no longer recognized. The media had turned against them. Their last Republican President had failed them and their ideas. They were hemorrhaging their own base voters. Cultural attitudes were shifting in ways they could not relate to nor comprehend.

Worst of all, they did not know what they wanted to become or how to restore some sense of control. So they stewed, and hooked up to an IV drip of outrage from cable news and talk radio. Anger. Rage. Fear. Frustration. Rinse. Repeat.

I knew things had forever changed when, working in the state Capitol in Sacramento, I witnessed a protest that drew thousands of people in full red, white and blue regalia, carrying signs about a ‘Tea Party’ and ‘We the people…’. One fella even wore a white powdered wig and a Revolutionary War costume. It was a Mardi Gras of outrage.

But what I remember most was that out of the thousands of people I saw, I didn’t recognize a single one of them. After 20 years in Republican politics, not one one familiar face. These were all new activists in a budding new phenomenon emerging in the GOP - the Tea Party movement.

The red-faced, neck bulging anger was directed at Republican leaders as much, if not more, than at the Democrats who controlled Washington. It was a tornado of self-destructive rage, knocking over everything in its path with one common characteristic - it had no direction. None. Rage for rage’s sake was the point because its adherents simply felt completely out of control while their world view collapsed around them.

They wanted a fight. They reveled in fury. They wanted an outlet to funnel the fear gripping them about the country’s future. They didn’t know exactly what they were angry about, they just wanted to yell. They thrived on rage. They wanted the government shut down. They wanted society to stop changing in ways they didn’t like. No solutions. No policy prescriptions. No leader. Just burn it all down.

To this day I still haven’t found a single person that can draw a policy distinction between the Tea Party activists and the establishment Republican base. Let me say that again because it’s a central, yet universally overlooked, dynamic of the Tea Party movement: There was NO distinction between what Tea Party activists wanted and what Republican normies wanted. The only differentiation was the level of rage they demanded. Fury and anger was the point.

There’s no question in my mind that this rage for rage’s sake became the fertile ground for the rise of Donald Trump’s politics of grievance. There’s also no doubt in my mind that the blind madness that boiled over in those years has defined Republican politics ever since. Looking back, MAGA’s politics of grievance provided both a natural direction for the politics of anger and a vehicle for its ideological malleability.

Anger has a way of doing that. It makes you forget who you are, what you stand for, or what you want. It reduces you to the fight-or-flight response of a human being whose identity is threatened.

That never ends well by the way. Not for people, not for parties, not for nations.

And this is precisely where Democrats find themselves now.

Democrats are having their own Tea Party moment, and the rage that consumes them threatens to leave this country without a responsible party trying to hold together some semblance of civilized governance. Our already teetering institutions won’t survive long in this environment.

The same spitting social anger that once consumed Republicans is now evident at both Republican and Democratic townhalls. Chuck Schumer has found himself in the hurricane’s path for refusing to shut down the government. Gavin Newsom is facing criticism from his own party for changing positions on cultural issues and platforming right-wing voices on his new podcast. And now, Ezra Klein is being attacked for the audacity of writing a book called ‘Abundance’ that suggests modern liberalism has failed to produce results for working-class and poor people.

Just how angry are Democrats?

One of my favorite data scientists, Lakshya Jain, recently wrote a remarkable article in Politico that’s a must read about what’s happening inside the Democratic Party. If you haven’t already, you owe it to yourself to read it: “We dug into the polls. Democrats in Congress should be very afraid.”

This particular graph from Jain’s organization, Split Ticket, makes the case better than anything else:

As Jain writes in the Politico:

“The numbers are clear: No longer satisfied with the status quo in their party, Democrats are on the verge of a Tea Party-style, intra-party revolt.

The Democratic approval data is unlike any in recent history — and it isn’t a case of bitter, disaffected partisans reacting to a loss in the last election. The first time Democrats lost an election to Donald Trump, their congressional approval ratings within the party actually ticked up, as Democratic base voters largely approved of the ways that party leadership resisted the Trump administration in early 2017. The same phenomenon surfaced among Republicans in 2021 when, despite Trump’s defeat and the subsequent chaos of Jan. 6, Republican voters remained generally positive regarding their views on the congressional GOP.”

While we lose ourselves in the daily social media outrage cycle, it’s critical to step back and see the bigger picture. We are clearly heading into a broader populist moment in American, if not world.

I believe our conventional understanding of politics as a simple right-left spectrum is woefully outdated. By that I mean I do not believe there is such a thing as “populist conservatism” and “progressive populism.” Properly understood, both conservatism and progressivism can’t coexist with populism. Rather, what we are witnessing is populism eroding our social institutions, with trust in those institutions breaking down along partisan lines. So, the Left will continue to advocate for expanded government, media and academia, while the Right will continue to defend the Church, military, law enforcement, and business interests. Meanwhile, all these institutions are losing the trust and confidence of the American people, and everyone feels like they’re treading water, economically, socially, and culturally - because they are.

The feeling of drowning is a natural result of actively supporting the destruction of institutions you don’t agree with. But social institutions, however flawed, inefficient and even corrupt, have existed to give our species a common framework for how society is structured. That framework is collapsing around us, and society is feeling it.

“Anger”, of course, is one of the seven stages of grief. As we recognize that we’ve lost the old framework that provided us consistency, comfort, and identity, it’s inevitable that rage will be part of the process.

The danger, of course, is that rage is like a dam breaking, where the forces of destruction cannot be directed or controlled. Those who counsel patience (James Carville) will be attacked. Those who try to preserve the current system to minimize harm to the weak and vulnerable (Chuck Schumer) will be derided. Those who suggest adaptation (Gavin Newsom) will be denigrated. Those that point out flaws and propose solutions (Ezra Klein) will be pilloried.

The list of apostates and turncoats will grow. I know. I was one of them. I stood athwart the raging inferno of Republican outrage asking the question “What about the country and our principles?”

Democrats are increasingly embracing the tactics of MAGA hordes, believing it’s already over and there’s no value in civility when your enemies, (they’re no longer considered opponents after all), are already destroying the country. Somehow there’s now virtue in destroying things first.

Democrats, like Republicans 20 years ago, have a lot of reckoning to do. Unfortunately, they seem to be following the exact same path. This is not a judgement call, in fact, looking back it seems so obviously unavoidable now.

“Denial” is a stage of grief, and it seems to me that Democrats are stuck between the two.

The Democratic Party stands at its lowest opinion approval rating in history. It has moved demonstrably to the left since 2020. The average American believes Democrats are more extreme than Republicans.

“The polling must be wrong!”, “It can’t be us!” I’ve heard it all from Democrats now, just as I heard it from the other side 20 years ago.

What this means is that as civility erodes, violence will escalate, providing more fodder for authoritarian elements to take root and rise. Our politics will become even more of a zero-sum game. Not because of the rise of extremists on the right and left, but because of the full embrace of populist elements that focus more on the destruction of opponents than responsible governance. Civilizations, particularly democratic ones, require diverse institutions to function. Not getting all of what you want is literally what democracy is.