Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was reading a news analysis peice today in the Washington Post. The general thrust of the article was one of how difficult it is for Democratic Senators in DC to satify the highly-motivated elements of their party in blocking the Roberts nomination. It appears as though liberal advocacy groups want a vigorous and strident opposition, while many Senators want to play it safe and low-key. You can read the bit yourself. Here it is.

It was actually the last paragraphs that struck a chord in your Maximum Leader. Here is the salient portion:

The divide between the Washington Democratic establishment and the party’s activists first manifested itself in 2002, when the activists angrily denounced congressional Democrats for refusing to make Bush’s tax cuts an issue in that year’s midterm campaigns.

Democratic leaders feared that a campaign to roll back Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans could hamper their efforts to win House seats in more rural or conservative districts. But activists saw it as a betrayal of the party’s traditional positions on fiscal responsibility and tax fairness.

The fissure became a chasm after the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to go to war against Iraq — supported by many congressional Democrats but opposed by many grass-roots activists. The disgust with what was seen as a submissive Washington-based leadership helped launch the presidential campaign of former Vermont governor Howard Dean and first signaled the growing strength of an Internet-based movement of activists who intended to make their voices heard in Washington.

Earlier this month, another quarrel broke out over the party’s tactics in a special House election in Ohio, in which Democrat Paul Hackett came within 5,000 votes of upsetting Republican Jean Schmidt in an overwhelmingly GOP district. Hackett enjoyed strong support from progressive bloggers, who helped him raise more than $400,000, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did not put money into the race until the final weekend. Some grass-roots activists complained bitterly that the DCCC had missed an opportunity to score a stunning upset.

The worlds of the bloggers and of the liberal advocacy groups are different, but both share concerns that the Washington-based leadership’s strategy may condemn Democrats to permanent minority status.

Much has been written about the impending doom, that is to say dissolution, of the Democratic Party since the 2004 elections. Frankly, much has been written about the impending doom, that is to say dissolution, of the Republican Party over the same course of time.

The problem here is that the articles all focus on the hard-core activists and their views vis a vis the elected leaders and DC party staff. The views of activists and politicians will never be aligned. The activists are true believers. For them one can never be too vocal, too strident, or too impassioned. For a politician you must always avoid being too vocal, too strident, and too impassioned. Activists can rarely get elected, and politicians hope not to offend. They are naturally at conflict. Activists want to pick every fight, politicians understand power better and how you have to pick your fights.

If one steps back one can see the interconnectedness of the two groups. Activists need politicians to advance even a meagre part of their agenda. Politicians need activists to spread the word. If the activists get frustrated and decided to stop helping politicians what happens? The agenda goes no where. What choice do the activists have? Where do they have to go? This is America. Given how our electoral system works there really isn’t anywhere to go. If we had some sort of parliamentary system where every party was entitled to representation based on the percentage of vote they recieved the situation would be different.

There is no coming crack up in either the Democratic or Republican party. What we are seeing is a reorganization of how the parties have to interact with their activist cores. They haven’t yet worked out the new relationship between those “in” pwer and those who fight for “the cause.” They are working on it. But they aren’t there yet.

Carry on.