The Democratic base is now predominantly liberal/progressive, but the "Democratic Party" is a DLC beltway nightmare. People like the DLC Hillary Clinton Doll are quite literally HATED by most of what used to be called Democrats. At great expense, effort, and sacrifice, progressives elected a 2006 Democratic Congress, but cowards and traitors like Nancy Peloci and Harry Reid converted this passionately hard won advantage into toilets down which they eagerly flush the slightest trace of liberal values and policies.
The "lunatic fringe" of the Republican Party has castrated the loyal opposition to what were formerly mainstream Democrats. The creative polarity between these two parties has ceased to exist. "Radicals" (that dirty word Republicans used to call Democrats) have eaten the Republican Party alive, with pathological religious fanatics babbling about Armageddon (the Baptist Big Bang) and vampire Texas energy companies raping Mother Nature to the verge of extinction. Said differently, it has been wisely pointed out that we rescued Europe from fascism twice, but now the fascists are HERE and no one is going to rescue us.
Other variables must include the neocon cabal which has direct associations with similarly lunatic fringe right wing Israelis. Hence, via this cabal, our national policy has been reduced to the tail wagged by the dog of another country. Indeed, this cabal is now virtually a 3rd Party in American Politics. The irony that a successful American 3rd Party is not based in America is infinite. At the very least, it utterly dominates what used to be the Republican Party, contributing to the inevitable death of the "American" Republican Party.
What happened to the Democratic Party is still something of a mystery. It has been obvious for years that the Democratic "Leadership" Council is a lapdog of America's Dictatorship of the Rich, but even with their limitless funding, the TOTAL disconnect between the DLC and the great majority of passionate progressives is a wonder to behold. And here again, the dog is wagging the tail, since DLC Democrats (a contradiction in terms) have tons of money, but relatively few members. A nearly exact comparison between the DLC and most Americans is that of the fascist collaborators in France during WW2.
It will take the highest quality poet combined with the highest quality historian to do justice to the boggling fact that the Neocon "Third Party" is all of a piece with the American 4th Reich -- a direct, and perhaps inevitable, extension of Germany's WW2 3rd Reich. Perhaps we should call our would be fascist masters the Neocon Reich.
It's interesting to speculate that since the neocon cabal has killed the Republican Party and the DLC has killed the Democratic Party, and since "establishment politics" is the modus operandi by which America's elites (1% or less) manipulate all the rest of us, one wonders what will happen now that establishment politics will no longer be a millstone around our necks.
