Kim Strassel: Democratic Party divide making it very difficult to make ‘consensus candidate’
Author, WSJ writer and Fox News contributor Kimberley Strassel tells ‘The Daily Briefing’ the split between progressives and moderates could sink the party in November.
Ahead of the New Hampshire primary, Wall Street Journal columnist and Fox News contributor Kim Strassel said on Friday that the Democratic Party's divide between its progressive and moderate wing is one of the "biggest stories that is driving American politics."
"It has enormous consequences for our politics and increasingly for the [Democratic Party]," Strassel told “The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino,”
"I mean, look at Iowa --Iowa didn't just forget how to do a caucus. What happened in Iowa was a result that four years ago, one side of the Democratic Party --the Bernie side -- felt that the primary had been rigged, that they had been robbed, and they demanded all of these changes. Iowa, in the end, wasn't up to the task of implementing them," Strassel said.
Strassel also cited the "theatrics" displayed at President Trump's State of the Union address and the recent impeachment push as indications that Democrats are failing to grapple with the direction of their party.
“The reality is that what you’ve got from the results in Iowa, broadly, is that the two major progressives --the Medicare-for-all candidates: [Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.,] and [Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt] got about half the vote and then the guys that are the “moderates” got about half the vote," Strassel went on, adding that division within the party is "making it very difficult for there to be a consensus candidate around which Democrats can rally,"
Sanders is leading the polls in New Hampshire after finishing in a virtual tie with former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg in Iowa. While he says he does not consider himself the Democrat front-runner, he is confident he is the one to beat President Trump.
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Sanders is projected to beat Trump in the national popular vote in a theoretical matchup by 49 percentage points to 45.3 for Trump, according to RealClearPolitics polling data.
Still, some voters worry that the infighting among Democrats -- even as the field is expected to thin out following the first four primaries -- will deter the party from defeating Trump.
Fox News’ Vandana Rambaran contributed to this report.
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