Tea Party Echoes? Democrats Grapple With Internal Dissent at Town Halls

[This column was reported for Political Breakdown, a newsletter offering analysis on Bay Area and California political news. Click here to subscribe.]

Is this a Tea Party moment for Democrats?

Back in early 2017, in the months after President Donald Trump’s first inauguration, I was working as a weekend reporter, which meant many Saturday and Sunday mornings, I was assigned to cover town halls held by local members of Congress.

As Trump pushed to ban travel from certain Muslim-majority countries and repeal the Affordable Care Act, these often sleepy meetings were turbo-charged. Hundreds of people packed gymnasiums from Vallejo to Fremont to vent their frustrations about Trump and begin the organizing that would help Democrats take back the House, Senate and White House over the next four years.

Now, Democrats are back in the same place: locked out of power in Washington.

But the vibe at the town hall I attended last weekend in Bakersfield felt different from eight years ago.

To be sure, Democrats showed up in Bakersfield to voice their outrage at the attempted dismantling of government programs by Trump and Elon Musk and the future cuts promised in the House Republican budget plan. However, many wanted to register their frustration with the leadership of the Democratic Party.

“When is the Democratic Party going to set aside its peacetime leaders and bring up some wartime leaders?” Darren Bly asked Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont). “Because that’s what we need.”

Scenes like that have played out in town halls across the country in recent weeks, leading many to wonder whether Democrats are facing a moment akin to the Tea Party of 2010, when insurgent energy within the Republican Party driven by opposition to President Barack Obama fueled GOP gains in the 2010 midterms — and toppled many established party leaders in the process.

The mood on the left was perhaps best captured by a recent NBC News poll that asked Democrats whether they wanted their members of Congress to “make compromises with President Trump to gain consensus on legislation” or to “stick to their positions even if this means not being able to get things done in Washington.”

In April of 2017, 59% of Democrats favored consensus and compromise. Now, just 32% do, according to the results of the NBC poll.

“I see all of this going on and all of these areas are just being cut and have been neglected,” Ayla Ozturk, a Visalia resident and student at the College of the Sequoias, told me. “It makes me very angry to see all of that and also to not really see anyone doing anything about it.”

Khanna is a longtime ally of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, so the crowd indexed more toward the progressive wing of the party. However, the frustration was palpable, particularly toward New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who joined with eight other Democrats to support a Republican funding bill that prevented a government shutdown.

“I really want to see the younger people in the party kind of rise to the leadership positions,” Ozturk said. “And people just want to see the Democratic Party do something, do things that are actually going to benefit people. They can talk the talk, but we need to see them walk the walk.”

At this point, the Tea Party comparisons seem a bit premature. For one, the brunt of the criticisms leveled at these town halls seem to focus on the Democratic Party’s posture, not its platform.

“No one is showing up at these things screaming that we need to be more to the left on any one particular policy,” said Orrin Evans, a Democratic strategist who has worked in many of California’s battleground House districts. “It’s ‘Where’s the backbone? Let’s fight.’”

And Khanna told CNN’s State of the Union that while there’s anger amidst the party’s base, “there’s also aspiration.”

“Are there going to be challenges [to incumbents] across the country? Absolutely. Is it going to be a Tea Party? No, because the Tea Party wanted to basically destroy the government, tear down the government,” Khanna said. “We want to build things like Medicare for all, like a living wage. So you’re going to see a new generation come in with a compelling economic message.”

A key piece of that message is opposition to the cuts Republicans are pursuing to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. On Political Breakdown, I talked with my colleagues Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos about why that message could be particularly effective in areas like Bakersfield that shifted toward Trump in the last election.