If you ask Bernie Sanders how he can get his ambitious legislative program through a Congress which is currently controlled by the GOP, and which is institutionally inclined to inertia regardless of who is in power, his answer is “the revolution.” What he means by that is that the program will have so much appeal to the poor and dispossessed, millions of previous non-voters will register and vote for their economic self-interest, and the blue wave will swamp everything in its path.
Right. It’s a great theory, but it never actually works. If you don’t believe me, just ask Bernie why Hillary beat him in 2016. The millions of new blue voters simply never materialize.
There is an analogous train of thought within the more extreme elements of the GOP, as was demonstrated when Steve Bannon and the RNC started to blast the Koch brothers. Bannon’s grand strategy for hanging on to power appears to be as follows:
1. Pump up the base, which consists of the Reactionary plurality within the GOP and any PBPs who are grateful for the tax cut and deregulation. Everyone else, including independents and disgruntled Republicans, can jump in a lake for all he cares.
2. Suppress the opposition vote through state legislation, clever gerrymandering, and negative ads.
3. Hope the Democrats implode and make everything much easier.
That sounds more like a wish list than a strategy. In addition, it relies on creating and sustaining divisions within the country that are extremely unhealthy.
The fact is that, while Trump’s white working class base gets all of the attention, he won in 2016 because millions of GOP voters who were suspicious of him voted for him, anyway, because they disliked Hillary even more. Those are the voters who will decide the 2018 and 2020 elections. Base mobilization, by itself, is not enough to win national elections.