There are two intersecting big divides in politics right now - insider/outsider, and reactionary/progressive. All four factions - insider progressives, outsider progressives, outsider reactionaries, and insider reactionaries - exist within both parties. Got that?
No?
Well, basically, insiders are people who are trusted with information and capital because they are seen as 'trusted' in some social sense. It's like being the failing CEO of a big company, if it's big enough, you're part of a club and all your charity boards will protect you. Outsiders are cut out of the loop, because they have not yet proven their allegiance to the social system, or they have actively disproved it.
Progressives are those who want to create more space for the polity, expansive room for self-expression and economic value creation. These people emphasize sharing of information, social networking, and hierarchies determined by merit and message sloppiness. Reactionaries are those who believe in a zero sum polity - what words you use take from a large store of attention, and someone else loses mindshare and power. While both parties have a progressive and reactionary faction, the ideology of progressivism is well-suited to Democrats, and the ideology of reactionary Republicanism is well-suited to the demagogues in charge.
The necessary alliance between the insider and outsider progressives is the key linkage that needs to be understood and recognized. When reactionaries can cleave progressives along the insider/outsider axis, they win. That is currently the case. While there are progressives within the Democratic Party, a lot of them even, their culture is not dominant.
It is not a bottom-up or top-down approach to politics that will bring us away from our political nightmare - it is a structured set of ideologically organized progressive institutions that foster a conversation among the progressives within all groups that will do this.
That's my abstract thought for the day.