IS THIS WHAT AN IDEOLOGICALLY BROAD ANTI-TRUMP COALITION LOOKS LIKE?

Could Democrats be having a Tea Party moment? The usually astute Ed Kilgore says no. He claims to understand what the Obama-era Tea Party was all about:

... the differences between the current moment and the one that sparked the tea-party movement are at least as striking as the similarities. The most important difference is that the uprising on the right was sharply ideological, and went far beyond demands for greater partisan combativeness. Its impetus was pretty clearly the bipartisan actions taken to mitigate the financial collapse that occurred late in the Bush administration, including the TARP bailout of investment institutions, but more importantly, the relief provided to regular folks who defaulted on mortgages.

... While tea-party protests may have been aimed at TARP and then Obamacare, they really represented a revolt against the New Deal and Great Society legacy of beneficent government and a clear and powerful right turn for the Republican Party.

Really? The Tea Party was a movement of opposition to "the New Deal and Great Society legacy of beneficent government"? Did you ever see any signs at Tea Party rallies that said "Repeal Social Security" or "Dump Medicare"? Neither did I. As for whether the movement was purely a protest against the welfare state, let me point out that we did, in fact, see signs like these:

I agree with Kilgore that angry Democrats today are different from the Tea Partiers of the Obama years, but one big reason is that they're not racist.

Kilgore thinks the current movement can't be compared to the Tea Party because Democrats don't agree on a push to the ideological extreme:

... it’s not accurate to say that the current wave of anger is ideological or the product of an aroused Left. As Politico notes, Democrats unhappy with their party are not at all united in any ideological diagnosis or prescription:

Despite the restive energy in the party’s progressive wing, the Democratic discontent does not seem to be centered around a desire to pull the party to the left or the right. Democrats cannot seem to agree on which direction the party should move in — recent Gallup polling found that 45 percent wanted the party to become more moderate, while 29 percent felt it should become more liberal, and 22 percent wanted it to stay the same.

I’m reasonably sure very few of the original tea-party activists wanted the GOP to become “more moderate.”

Republican voters don't seek moderation because Republican politicians and pundits don't endorse moderation or scold people at the partisan edge. Democratic politicians and pundits frequently do, which is one reason much of the rank-and-file embraces the middle.

But we may be entering a period in which moderate Democrats and progressive Democrats have a lot in common. Is it moderate or progressive to want Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA to function properly? I think the wish to defend these and other bedrock programs transcends the Democratic Party's ideological differences.

And now we're seeing two politicians from different wings of the Democratic Party reaching out to each other.

Remember Conor Lamb, the former Pennsylvania congressman who was seen by some as the most electable candidate in the state's 2022 Senate primary? That primary was won by the eventual general-election winner, John Fetterman, who was seen as a member of the party's Bernie Sanders wing. Lamb, by contrast, was described in The Nation as another Joe Manchin:

In 2018, Lamb was one of 13 Democrats to vote for an amendment repealing an Obama-era clean water regulation known as Waters of the United States, and one of seven to oppose an amendment that would reduce fossil fuel research and development funds. He voted twice for GOP resolutions against implementing carbon taxes.

... Lamb has also joined Republicans in voting against other Democratic priorities, like decriminalizing marijuana, ending the war in Iraq, and delivering Covid-19 relief to undocumented immigrants. When Lamb first entered Congress, he voted with Trump’s position about 68 percent of the time.

But now Fetterman is doing the Manchin imitation and Lamb is attacking him from the left:

And now there's this:

Centrists can agree with progressives that it's good to defend Social Security and Medicare, and I think quite a few Democratic voters who don't consider themselves progressives aren't happy with the current oligarchy -- or won't be when its heedless "break stuff" ideology begins tearing down more of what Americans take for granted.

I don't know whether all this can add up to a Democratic Tea Party. The Obama-era Tea Party wanted what plutocrats wanted, so the Koch network and the Murdoch media were enthusiastic backers. Democrats today want to save (or restore) the social safety net (and the rule of law, and services like the post office that are under threat). Rich people are unlikely to get behind this. But maybe Democrats across the spectrum from left to center can find a way to build a broad-based movement on their own.