The Growing Divide Within the Democratic Party between the Establishment and Progressives

U.S. News columnist Dave Cantanese wrote this piece on a growing divide within the Democratic Party between the party's establishment and the progressive base of the party. In his piece, Cantanese quoted Roger Hickey, one of the co-founders of the progressive organization Campaign for America's Future, who gave a very good description of a growing divide within the Democratic Party between the party's establishment and the progressives who compromise the party's base:

Roger Hickey, co-founder for the liberal group Campaign for America’s Future, contends that while the base is lurching leftward, party leadership is less comfortable with the path. 

“The structure of the Democratic Party [is] trying to figure this out​,” he says. “There are the timid Democrats who don’t want to threaten their possibility of getting money from Wall Street. There’s a lot of them, including Hillary Clinton.”

If you're wondering why the Democratic Party isn't as progressive as it should be, there are two key reasons why:

1. Establishment Democrats, such as Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Steve Israel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Ron Kind, Rahm Emanuel, etc. are more concerned about getting payoffs from Wall Street and other special interests than fighting for progressive ideas.
2. Most Democratic voters hold progressive views on most issues, but many Democrats don't want to be seen as progressive and are unwilling to fight the party's establishment for control of the party.

Unlike many Democrats, I'm proud to call myself a progressive. I believe in restoring the American middle class, protecting the rights of workers, women, minorities, and voters, guaranteeing equal rights for all Americans, giving more Americans access to affordable health care, making government less corrupt and more transparent, guaranteeing workers a living wage, regulating private-sector businesses to protect consumers, the environment, and the public, modernizing our nation's infrastructure, repealing free trade agreements that have shipped American jobs overseas, and staying out of the foreign affairs of other countries except when necessary to protect U.S. interests, among other things. More importantly, I fight for what I believe will make America a better place for all of us to live.