Democrats are hoping it’s their turn for a tea party.
“Democrats Were Blindsided By The Tea Party Wave,” The Huffington Post wrote on Feb. 8. “Now Republicans Worry It Could Happen To Them.”
“Is The Anti-Trump ‘Resistance’ The New Tea Party?” The Atlantic asked on Feb. 9.
“Are Democrats Having Their Tea Party Moment?” Vanity Fair wondered on Feb. 10.
“A New, Liberal Tea Party Is Forming,” The Washington Post declared on Feb 11. “Can It Last Without Turning Against Democrats?”
But what a number of liberal elites in the media and elsewhere hope is a tea-party-esque, broad and inclusive movement to hold bad government accountable, Americans across the country see rioting on behalf of foreigners, assaulting American police officers and attacking political opponents in the streets. All mixed in with hopeless whining in Congress. Even the most tea-party-esque event to happen so far– the massive women’s march after the inauguration — included millionaire celebrities screaming about period blood and bombing the White House.
Chances are low that, after eight very successful years of rule by the left, a fiery temper tantrum rings with the America that most identify with and will help Democrat regain their footing. (ASTROTURF: Obama PACs Bused Protesters To GOP Town Halls)
While on Capitol Hill, minority leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi lead their party in self-aggrandizing walk-outs, sit-ins and accusations of racism, on the two coasts, the mass movement that Democrats have waited for is busying itself scaring the hell out of Middle America.
On Jan. 31, Berkeley’s campus newspaper called on students to halt free speech on campus. The next day, a speech was cancelled after black-masked rioters caused $100,000 in damage, breaking windows, setting fires, pepper-spraying women and attacking anyone they disagreed with.
The day after, elected California Democrats attacked the president for threatening the university’s federal handouts, instead of condemning the rioters. No doubt they chose to side with black-clad criminals targeting people for their words, all against their common enemy, a newly elected president. Americans took notice.
That same day, at an elite university across the country, a woman who said she was a New York University professor screamed and cursed the country’s most storied police force for not beating the speaker over his politics. The speaker, a co-founder of Vice Media, was later pepper sprayed by an attacker. Further south, a congresswoman from Florida called the Berkeley riots “a beautiful sight.”
“It wasn’t just people dressed in black who were acting militantly and everyone else is peace-loving Berkeley hippies,” Yvette Felarca, a California immigration activist who self-identifies as a militant but likely can’t do three pull-ups, told the LA Times.
“Everyone cheered when those barricades were dismantled. … Everyone was there with us in political agreement of the necessity of shutting it down, whatever it was going to take. It shows we have the power. I thought it was quite stunning.”
The weekend after the riots, the student newspaper congratulated itself on students standing up for their values.
“This is what community looks like,” the rioters chanted. “Like an inferno?” CNN anchor Jake Tapper replied. Americans took notice.
And back on the Hill, President Barack Obama’s old secretary of Labor said his party should hit President Donald Trump “between the eyes with a two-by-four and treat him like Mitch McConnell treated Barack Obama.”
“The Democrats are taking a victory lap,” one Senate staffer told me as he stood in front of a Chinatown pizza shop a half hour after Trump’s secretary of Education was sworn in. “They don’t know they lost,” he laughed. It’s no wonder they’re praying for a movement.
Indeed, the tea party leaves much for the left to admire. When it formed around seven years ago, Democratic politicians tried in vain to prove elements of racism and violence while conservative grassroots used peaceful organizing to retake power, slow a liberal president’s agenda, and push the national party in a direction they wanted. Today, the left finally has its violence, but the plan to side with the rioters and demonstrators to retake power and slow a populist president’s agenda is significantly more likely to consume than help them — “like an inferno.”