There’s a lot of news right now about conflicts within the Democratic Party, and similar stories will likely continue to pop up for the next two years. Much of this is normal and unsurprising. The American political system has only two major parties, resulting in those parties being large and internally diverse — a political reporter could write a “Democrats divided” or “Republicans divided” story virtually any day of any year. And the Democrats are in a complicated place politically at the moment, having just won a major election but not the presidency, which would give the party one single person to rally around.
All that said, it’s worth unpacking these divides among elected Democrats. Not because they will necessarily hurt the party in November 2020, but because those divides will explain a lot of what happens day-to-day until the presidential election and potentially afterward. CONT.
Perry Bacon Jr., FiveThirtyEight