Dem Strategist Predicts Party Has Its Own ‘Tea Party’ Revolt Coming: ‘We Brought This On Ourselves’
Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said on Thursday she believes a “tea party” revolt is imminent in the Democratic Party following a bombshell report suggesting concerns about President Joe Biden’s mental and physical state stretch all the way back to the first months of his presidency.
Roginsky, co-founder of Lift Our Voices, joined Abby Phillips’s CNN panel on Thursday night to react to the report from The Wall Street Journal, which painted a not-so-pretty picture of the president’s decline. Concerns about Biden’s age and physical state were brought to the forefront following his June debate with President-elect Donald Trump, and he was quickly replaced on the Democratic Party ticket by Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I think Joe Biden, despite all this, had a very successful tenure. You may disagree, but I think on policy, as a Democrat, he had a very successful four years. But there is a bigger problem here, and that is that I think Democrats are at the point where Republicans might have been right after the Bush election or after the Bush term was up, which is that I think Democrats are starting to mistrust their institutions,” Roginsky argued.
Beyond the Journal report, the strategist also pointed to bipartisan support for the Iraq War and former President Barack Obama failing to hold anyone “accountable” after the 2008 financial crash as things that are making Democrats want to turn away from the “institution” and look for new leaders.
“This goes back to a bipartisan effort to lie us into the Iraq war, not just by George Bush, but also by a lot of Democrats. It has to do with the fact that Barack Obama did not hold anybody accountable after the 2008 crisis, which also happened on George Bush’s watch, but he became president,” she said. “He never threw a hostage on the tarmac from Wall Street. You saw the rise of Bernie Sanders as a result of that, and you saw a lot of institutional Democrats, me included, saying, no, no, no, this is not the time, we have to stick with the institution.”
Roginsky predicted an internal revolt in the mold of the Republicans’ “tea party,” something she’s found herself supporting.
If such an internal revolt does happen, Roginsky said, it’s because Democrats “brought it” on themselves.”
She argued:
I think you have a lot of Democrats now, me included, who are pretty sick of the institution and trusting people in the institution. And this is just one example, the most recent example, I think of people institutionally lying to the American people and what you’re ultimately going to see, and I don’t have a problem saying this as a Democrat is that you’re going to see a tea party version rise up in the Democratic Party based on the fact that this is yet another marker of people just not trusting our leaders anymore. And I’m sorry to say that, but I think we brought this on ourselves.
Watch above via CNN.
