Why does this matter? Certainly every party or large societal group has various factions and pressure groups. It matters because lots of groups have the sense that the Democratic Party is fundamentally theirs or that they should have some pride of place in its direction. But in a purely descriptive sense this is simply not true. And that leads to what we might call chronic discourses of betrayal running through all its factional struggles. We’re seeing one of those now, unfolding in multiple directions.

Every other democracy on the planet figured this out a century or more ago, with party pluralism through proportional representation. Instead we have a defacto two party system, due to our winner-take-all, first past the post elections. In any other democracy, social democrats (“progressives” in the US) would have their own party, the liberals ("centrists, moderates or establishment Democrats in the US) would have their own party, and socialists/Democratic socialists would have a party. There would likely be a labor party, and a green party. Here, just the Democrats. That’s it. All of those ideological groups competing for control of one party.

This country is such bullshit. My whole fucking life I’ve been fed this crap about the unparalleled virtues of our glorious, enlightened, liberal representative democracy. But it’s a crock. Millions of us have no representation. Sure, there is a member of the House and Two senators in Congress who are supposed to represent me and every other American in my congressional district and state, respectively, but I didn’t vote for any of them. The candidates I did vote for all lost. The candidates who won don’t represent me. They don’t represent my values, my beliefs, my morals, my ideals. No one does. Representative democracy my ass.