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Michael Moore, the sometime movie maker and full-time America hater, put Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on notice: Hell recruit and finance primary challengers to any Democrat who votes for Trumps Supreme Court nominee, Finley writes.(Photo: Jose Luis Magana / AP)

Welcome to the tea party, Democrats.

For eight years Democrats drifted further out of the American mainstream, stubbornly refusing a course correction to bring them closer to the middle.

Their inherent smugness and ingrained sense of superiority made it impossible to see the warning signs in their loss of 1,000 state and federal offices since 2010.

If something was wrong, it was with the people, not their party. They continued to obsess over identity politics and cull their base of its objectionables, certain the countrys changing demographics made their hold on the White House ironclad.

Now they have Donald Trump, a reality they just cant choke down.

So they are resisting it, pretending they can make Trump go away if they refuse to acknowledge him as president.

And theyre demanding their leaders do the same.

Michael Moore, the sometime movie maker and full-time America hater, put Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on notice: Hell recruit and finance primary challengers to any Democrat who votes for Trumps Supreme Court nominee. Cooperation with the administration will be viewed as a betrayal, and will be punished.

This American Resistance Movement, as singer Bruce Springsteen dubbed it during a concert in Australia, sounds a lot like the tea party.

Those grassroots Republicans rose out of the passage of Obamacare, and have sent scores of arch conservatives to Congress since 2010. They arrived with the same marching orders Democrats are now giving Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and crew: Resist.

Gridlock was the predictable result. And a frustrated president turned increasingly to extra-constitutional executive orders to move his agenda.

Expect the same if Democrats heed the warnings of the resistance movement. And they will. Most have already pledged to so.

Remember how appalled Democrats were when the tea party was marching, demeaning President Barack Obama and calling for a political revolution? Pelosi declared herself frightened for her life by the hateful words and angry signs.

As always in politics, much depends on whose ox is being gored. The former House Speaker seems unbothered by the sheer hatred expressed for Trump, and the outright calls for his death.

Democrats are no more obliged to salute an agenda they find offensive than Republicans were during the Obama years. And I get that many see Trump as an abomination.

But knee-jerk resistance to everything invites being ignored. The American system was designed to force consensus through compromise. Weve blown that up over the past two decades. Now, were lurching from one extreme to another, with executive orders enabling what may as well be rotating dictatorships.

Liberals are on the outside now, and theyre behaving the same way the tea party conservatives did, only worse. The language is identical. All or nothing. No middle ground. No deals.

I half expect to see Michael Moore squeezed into a Dont Tread on Me T-shirt.

Nolan Finleys book Little Red Hen: A Collection of Columns from Detroits Conservative Voice is available from Amazon, iBooks, and Barnes & Noble Nook.

nfinley@detroitnews.com

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Finley: Tea time for Democrats - The Detroit News