The transformation of the Republican Party under President Trump is a well-told story. Less noted, but no less significant, is the change in the Democratic Party during the same period. Heading into 2020, neither party is what it was when Donald Trump ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The changes are not symmetrical. Trump’s wholesale takeover of a Republican Party that once stood for free trade, deficit reduction, entitlement reform and internationalism speaks to the power of an individual to bend an institution in his direction and recast it in his image.
What has happened to the Democratic Party is much the opposite. The party has been turned upside down, changed not by a strong or prominent leader but by many ordinary people whose power is in the collective. Once a party that was beholden to big donors, shaped by its leaders and shadowed significantly by the Clintons (both before and after Barack Obama’s tenure), Democrats are now powered at and by the grass roots — financially, organizationally and ideologically. CONT.
Dan Balz, Washington Post