BEGUN, THE DEMOCRATIC WARS HAVE: Hillary vs. Bernie vs. Obama | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's note: This post was sent to me by Ben Shapiro, who represents the Daily Wire, and since this is the most topical news event of the day, it should be published on BCN.

    While the media focus incessantly on the real and important divisions within the Republican Party, they're ignoring a tripartite division in the Democratic Party that's just as serious: the division between the Hillary Clinton wing, the Bernie Sanders wing, and the Barack Obama wing.

    Each of these wings has overlap with the others. But their central motivating forces are different, as are their key strategies. That's become eminently clear with the release of particular excerpts from Hillary's new book, What Happened, in which she takes a blowtorch to Sanders particularly.

    This is pretty brutal stuff, and it shows the difference between Hillary and Bernie: she thinks pragmatically, while he thinks idealistically. That means she captures the vote of "moderates" who just want bigger government than Republicans are willing to grant, but loses the younger crowd that has a hard-core ideological vision of fundamental change to the country.

    Then there's the third wing of the party: the Obama wing. This wing of the party isn't ideologically or pragmatically driven by policy concerns; it's more driven by a deep and abiding belief that the Obama voting coalition must be duplicated and expanded. This means doubling down on identity politics.

    Over the weekend, news broke that the Obama team was looking for a candidate to support in 2020. They aren't fully behind the Sanders wing of the party - they're not willing to lend their support to Senators Kamala Harris (D-CA) or Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), for example. And they aren't behind the Hillary wing of the party, either - they're not ready to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden, who's obviously itching to take on Trump. No, they're looking seriously at former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, from whom Obama originally stole his "just words" routine in 2008. Patrick's chief recommendation to Obama is his race (he's black), but his policies look more like Hillary's than Bernie's.

    So, how does the future of the Democratic Party look? It looks like a three-way battle for leadership: the moderate Hillary wing, moving away from the intersectionality politics of the Obama wing; the Obama wing, moving away from the class-based coalition of both Sanders and Hillary; and the Sanders wing, seeking a full class war.

    The 2020 primaries are going to be brutal.