Yesterday's primaries as well as other recent ones have revealed the new reality in party politics, angry people sway them.
The difficulty facing both major parties is simply "who is in charge?"
They both evolved in a system where certain broad values were effectively shared and the differences were more related to how to achieve shared visions on what America was and what it should be.
"Establishment" people accepted as their premise that the great majority of American voters shared certain fundamental values related to the institutions of this country.
Racism and hatred were wrong, capitalism is good, a strong safety net is needed, etc. etc.
However, even if that is true, the apathy of the middle has led to a situation where angry people get out and vote in primaries, leading to more divisiveness in our politics.
It really started with some "conservative" causes such as abortion, gun control, taxation, where they took an all or nothing approach. Not being angry enough about those issues became a death wish in primaries where only those who had drunk the Kool-Aid got selected.
It reached a sort of fruition in the last presidential election where one of the most anti-establishment candidates was able to win an electoral college majority largely because the Democratic candidate was so establishment that she had little appeal to the progressives, despite her gender.
It also put a certain onus on the party itself which was viewed, correctly, as supporting the establishment candidate over the progressive one.
So now we are seeing establishment candidates losing in primaries in record numbers as the motivated voters are the angry progressives who realize they gave the election to the most non-progressive person possible.
Its clearly going to move the party and most likely the country further left as we go through the election cycle and ramp up for the next presidential one.
Unfortunately it will be most likely another congress unable to accomplish much, at least until a new center can be established.
Right now there is little if any of it left.
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