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Something is happening in the Democratic Party in this Age of Trump. I don't know if it's just impatience with its own leaders or the beginning of a revolution. But we're seeing it not only in Washington, but on the campaign trail.
We certainly saw the anger boil over Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was beginning the process of holding confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Whether it was because the Trump Administration has refused to release thousands of documents regarding Kavanaugh's years working in the Bush White House, or the sense that committee chair Chuck Grassley was trying to push the nomination through without a thorough examination of his record, or simply pent up resentment over what happened to Merrick Garland in 2016, the Democrats were not going to stay quiet. They may not be able to stop the nomination -- and the addition of Jon Kyl to the Senate means that Kavanaugh could now survive the defection of, say, Susan Collins and still win confirmation. But the Dems are, to paraphrase Howard Beale in Network, mad as hell and they don't intend to take it anymore.
We're seeing this frustration boil over in the primaries as well. Tuesday night's stunning victory of Ayanna Pressley, an African-American member of the Boston City Council, over ten-term Rep. Michael Capuano in Massachusetts' 7th CD is only the latest example.
This one was not about ideology; the candidates were pretty similar on the issues. It was more about generational change, and race. For one thing, the Bay State has never elected a person of color to the House. The 7th happens to be a minority-majority district. Plus, Capuano is 66; Pressley is 44. And she argued that his 20 years in Congress were not doing much for the district.
What Pressley hopes to accomplish ... what New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez intends to do ... what Andrew Gillum, the 39-year old mayor of Tallahassee, hopes to do in Florida should he be elected governor in November ... all this frustration and desire may be incidental to their loathing of Trump. Perhaps, with Bernie Sanders turning 77 on Saturday, Joe Biden turning 76 in November, and Nancy Pelosi, whose tenure as the top House Democrat is hardly assured, at 78 -- not to mention the 74-year old John Kerry, the party's 2004 nominee whose name has surprisingly resurfaced of late -- maybe it's simply that they had their chance. And now it's our turn.
We'll know more after November 6th.
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