Denial, delusion, whistling past the graveyard — call it what you will, but the Democrats have a problem.  With each new statement by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Jasmine Crockett, Ro Khanna, James Carville, Chuck Schumer — pretty much any Democrat who speaks to or before the media — the question becomes, “Can this marriage be saved?”  Can the Democrat party stay united under one banner, or is it careening headlong to an irrevocable split?

Two factions vie for supremacy in today’s Democrat party.  Ironically, both sides are Marxists.

On the one side, Karl Marx: “Workers of the world unite!”

On the other side, Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them ... well, I have others.”

To put it another way, Karl Marx Democrats have principles — ideas in which they fervently believe and for which they are willing to fight and, if necessary, (figuratively) die.  For “Karls,” the question is how, ideally, à la Margaret Thatcher, to “win the argument and then win the election,” and if that’s not possible, to impose their views on the rest of us “by any means necessary.”

“Grouchos,” on the other hand, have no hard and fast message for which they are willing to fight, win or lose.  For Grouchos, the question is not “How can we get our message across?,” but “What should our message be?”  What do a critical mass of voters, the minimum needed to give us the majority, want to hear so that they will vote for us?  It doesn’t take much search engine sleuthing to adduce multiple examples of Democrats debating what “to stand for.”  Move left, move right, or stay put?

Of course, for a political party to herd dueling, sometimes recalcitrant (I’m looking at you, Freedom Caucus) factions is nothing new.  But what if one faction’s views — unrestricted and unvetted immigration, “defunding the police,” “globalizing the Intifada,” slicing and dicing the genitals of teenagers who believe (often temporarily) themselves to be trapped “in the wrong sex,” drag shows for kindergarteners — are so antithetical to the average voter that to give them any place, let alone prominence, in the Democrat platform is to commit electoral suicide?

Groucho Marx Democrats cannot win without Karl Marx Democrats.  They also cannot win with them.  And so today’s Democrats find themselves at a fork in the road.  The great philosopher and former Yankees catcher Yogi Berra advised, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”  Okay, but ... which path? 

How about neither?  This is exactly what a rebellious — and principled — faction of another political party, a party that no longer exists, did 171 years ago.

Since the adoption of the Constitution, to the chagrin and/or dismay of the Founding Fathers, who eschewed the idea of political parties, American politics has been dominated by two.  Today, it is the Democrats and the Republicans, but in the mid-nineteenth century, the two major parties were the Democrats and the Whigs — until the most important issue to plague and, ultimately, divide us led to the Whigs’ demise.

That issue was slavery, on which there can be no “middle ground.”  How, then, to keep an abolitionist faction united under the banner of a party that refuses to speak, or act, against slavery?  History showed us that, at least as far as the Whigs were concerned, it could not be done.  And so, in 1854, a group of disgruntled abolitionist Whigs met in Wisconsin and formed the Republican Party.

In 1860, the newly formed Republican Party nominated its first presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln.  But on the day in 1854 when the GOP was born, the founders could not have predicted how long their new party would endure — or that their candidate would, just six years later, win the presidency.  So why did they do it?  What compelled them to abandon a well established political party and stride forth into the unknown?

They did it on principle.

Fast-forward to today.  Are principled — however wrong, in this writer’s eyes, those principles may be — Karl Marx Democrats facing their own moment of truth?  Is it time for the Karl Marx wing of the Democrat party to look objectively and honestly at the Groucho Marx wing and ask themselves, “Can this marriage be saved?” and decide that it can’t?

Has the time for the “principled” Karl Marx wing to split from the Democrat party and found a new one, even if it means probably losing the next election ... and the next, and the next, as they try to build a new party and convince or entice or cajole people to join?

That’s a question only Democrats (this writer is an independent) can answer.  Given the state of today’s Democrat party, we may not have to wait long.

Gene Schwimmer is the proprietor of Gene’s Geopolitical Thought for the Day on YouTube.

Image: david__jones via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.