The deep frustration that Democratic voters have with the party’s elected officials, which turned into fury after Senate Democrats last week cut a deal with Republicans to end the government shutdown that didn’t include the Obamacare subsidies that Dems had previously demanded, has led to comparisons to the conservative Tea Party movement of the early 2010s. Democratic activists and voters, critics charge, need to lead a purge of the party’s leadership and many of its current officials, as the Republican rank and file did more than a decade ago.

I understand the frustration. Truly. But we don’t need a liberal version of the Tea Party. Instead, the Democratic Party should borrow from what it did from 2005 to 2008 and from 2017 to 2020, the last periods after the party lost presidential elections. Careful leadership changes, innovative policies, and yes, a few well-targeted primary challenges are the path Democrats took in those instances and should be repeated again—not the tear-it-all-down craziness of the Tea Party.

If not for James Comey sending a letter on the eve of the 2016 election reopening the investigation about Hillary Clinton’s use of email as secretary of state and fatally wounding her campaign, as well as Democrats insisting on pushing an 81-year-old Joe Biden as their candidate for most of the last election cycle, I doubt anyone would think of the Tea Party as a successful model to replicate. The Tea Party, the informal name given to the conservative protests and activism in the wake of Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, wasn’t exactly the civil rights movement, in terms of discipline, strategy, and execution. It was scattershot, simplistic, and at times just outright stupid.

Let me remind you of the real story of the Tea Party. It started with an on-air rant by a cable television host. Once it became a political movement, Republican voters and super-right-wing members of Congress haphazardly tossed out prominent figures in the party, starting with Utah Senator Bob Bennett in 2010 and hitting a fever pitch when House Speaker John Boehner was essentially forced to resign from that post in 2015. Conservative voters squandered winnable seats and likely a Senate majority by nominating crazy candidates like Delaware’s

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