The Democrat crackup in Washington

Kimberley Strassel:

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... Mrs. Pelosi this week accomplished the remarkable feat of sidelining Mr. Trump and owning most of the unpleasant headlines herself. House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler explained that his sprawling Trump investigation was primarily designed to convince voters that Democrats were “not just trying to steal the last—to reverse the results of the last election.” This required his colleagues to deny furiously that the party has already decided on impeachment.

Then there was the crackup between House party elders who wanted Democrats to condemn the anti-Semitism of Rep. Ilhan Omar, and woke freshmen who wanted to turn smears against Jews into a fuzzy discussion of hurt feelings. Members battled for days, only for Mrs. Pelosi on Thursday to roll over to the progressive left’s demand that any resolution condemn “hate” in general and not anti-Semitism specifically. Even CNN described all this as “chaos.”

These are not the only incidents. They follow a high-profile moment in which moderate Democrats bucked their party to vote with Republicans on gun control, as well as furious backlash to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s threat last week to put those Democrats on a “list” for a primary challenge if they don’t get with her program. And of course radical-left House members for weeks have overshadowed the Pelosi agenda with their own proposals for a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, giant tax hikes and more.

It’s tempting to write these moments off as growing pains or the type of backbencher grandstanding that debilitated John Boehner’s speakership. But that ignores how huge and fundamental the fissures are becoming in the Democratic Party. This isn’t a tea-party moment, which was fueled by conservatives who felt their Republican members weren’t living up to principles that most in the party share. The Democratic Party is moving in two different directions.

Ideologically, how do you mesh a party whose members variously embrace and reject capitalism? Hillary Clinton, in a remarkable moment last year, said she believes her decision in 2016 to call herself a “capitalist” hurt her in places like Iowa, where “41% of Democrats are socialists or self-described socialists.” In other words, well over a third of Iowa caucus-goers reject the economic and political basis upon which the Democratic Party was founded.

The moderates who won Mrs. Pelosi the gavel ran on deficit reduction, border security and market reforms. Today’s progressive movement subscribes to “modern monetary theory,” in which debt no longer matters; wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and believes markets are immoral. These aren’t degrees of separation. They’re completely separate philosophies.
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Nadler's strategy for impeachment requires convincing Republicans who support Trump which is currently 96 percent to turn on Trump and support impeachment?  The chances of that are remote at best and his fishing expedition has further angered most Republicans.  Pelosi angered more people than she pleased with her vote against "hate."  It was clearly a dodge to appease the bigots in her party.  It demonstrated how weak she is working with her narrow majority and a gaggle of far-left kooks who want to push economic malpractice as a policy.