Oh but this is going to hurt, and judging by the online Twitter meltdowns from Leftists it’s a burn that’s going to last a long time, certainly past the Mid-Term elections next month.

Just a few years ago Tulsi Gabbard, as a House Rep. from Hawaii, was being talked up as yet another youthful face of a rising Democrat Party poised to do great things in the 21st century. Military veteran, mutli-ethnic, female, etc. She was the Vice-Chair of the Democrat National Committee (DNC). When she ran for the Democrat Presidential nomination in 2019 she did better than many others with higher profiles but faded for the usual reasons such young, first-time candidates do; lack of money and support from inside the upper echelons of the Democrat Party – including the DNC – who eventually plumped for “moderate” and easily controlled Joe Biden over True Believer Socialist Bernie Sanders.

But she didn’t exit before the current VP, Kamala Harris – seen as a front-runner in the beginning but who faded fast – and not before Gabbard had torn Harris a new asshole on the debate stage (to the loud cheers of the crowd) about how she had so harshly treated marijuana users during her time as California’s AG. Defendant’s rights had gone right out the window with Harris and she was made to look like a complete hypocrite.

But since then it’s become obvious that Gabbard was increasingly uncomfortable with her Party. She quit her House seat while under no pressure to do so, and has been increasingly critical of the Democrats. Now there’s this.

“I believe in a government that is of, by, and for the people. Unfortunately, today’s Democratic Party does not. Instead, it stands for a government of, by, and for the powerful elite. I’m calling on my fellow common sense, independent-minded Democrats to join me in leaving the Democratic Party. If you can no longer stomach the direction that so-called woke Democratic Party ideologues are taking our country, I invite you to join me.” 

A tough yet elegant blast, and one that also raises questions about those who have daily tub-thumped about a Republican Party that has become “extremist” and under the thumb of OrangeMussolini.

I doubt she’ll have any success with a third party. Such independent, breakaway efforts are difficult to achieve in most Western countries, even those with proportional representation such as ours; 5-10% being the ceiling typically. However, it has happened occasionally; here in NZ the Labour Party was a minnow that took more than two decades to come to power, while others, like the Liberal Party, faded after decades of dominance. See also the rise of the Swedish Democrats, and the Brothers of Italy.

But in the US it’s almost impossible. There have always been such movements and “Independent” or Libertarian candidates for President, but they’ve never amounted to much. The last change was the rise of the Republican Party in the late 1850’s, following from the rise of the Democrat Party and the fading of the Whigs.

But the real lesson here will be learned inside the Democrat Party, just as it was with the rise of Bill Clinton, himself a product, and leader, of the Democrat Leadership Council that rose in power through the 1980’s trying to modernise the Party to deal with the Reagan Revolution, and which sealed the deal in the wake of the Party losing its third Presidential election in a row in 1988.

Or will it be learned? Even as Clinton won his second Presidential term in 1996 the knives were out for the DLC, “triangulation” and all the rest of the Clinton ways. It would take until 2008 before that crowd got the bit between their teeth with Barack Obama and declared – not so quietly and subtly – that the days of moderation were at an end. Clinton may have nodded to the Reagan GOP that , “The era of Big Government is over”, but the never-sleeping Far Left of the party never agreed, keeping quiet only to enable the least-worst option (i.e. not the GOP) to win. Once in power themselves they were determined to wipe out such thoughts permanently – and they think they have. They will both cheer and jeer Gabbard as she departs, thinking it another victory.

But election defeats, if large enough and successive enough, do change minds – or at least the minds of the go-along-to-get-along “centrists” of every political party.