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The Democratic Party has gone into full resistance mode, and now a portion of the left has begun working on a Tea Party-style grassroots campaign. However, this movement is quite different from the Republican Tea Party movement of the late 2010s.
While the right-wing Tea Party movement pushed common-sense economic policies, the left-wing Tea Party movement is more of an attempt by the radical left to seize control of the Democratic Party's levers of power.
While these radical left policies, and the Bernie Sanders/AOC wing of the Democratic Party, might be good for getting online clicks and media attention, they aren’t popular with mainstream Americans.
That’s why Andrew Shirley with AMAC says this movement won’t have the same impact that the Tea Party movement did. He pointed out that, "Democrats don’t understand that to have a populist movement, one has to be popular. They misconstrue passion with popularity."
He went on to say that these same policies that AOC and Bernie Sanders recently went on a speaking tour to promote are the same ones that cost the Democrats the 2024 election. He said, "The things they’re passionate about, the things that define a theoretical populist movement on the far left, are some of the most extreme policies."
Shirley pointed to examples like the left’s radical support for extreme gender ideology, as well as their so-called "democratic socialist" governing philosophy.
He also pointed to the Green New Deal, which was championed by AOC and Bernie Sanders, and became the framework of Biden’s "Inflation Reduction Act," which, despite its name, also led to the record-high inflation that also played a major role in the defeat of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Shirley says this is just yet another example of Democrats choosing the wrong side of 80/20 political issues for the sole purpose of opposing Donald Trump.