Fifty years after a Democratic Party meltdown helped elect Republican President Richard Nixon, J.T. Young writes at Investor’s Business Daily that the Democratic Party faces similar fears today.

Extremist confrontations threatening Democrats today similarly ended their national dominance fifty years ago. What 1968’s Democratic Convention did in Chicago, current liberal activists are seeking to do nationwide by confronting Trump administration officials wherever they find them.

Today’s Democratic establishment is right to fear that, just as half century ago, America’s broader electorate will be alienated by their party’s extreme left. …

… With such a past, establishment Democrats are right to fear their extreme left’s increasing belligerent confrontations with Trump administration officials. While hardly Chicago’s pitched battles, neither is today’s Democratic Party 1968’s — nor America that of 50 years ago.

The Democrat establishment first fear must be their decreasing control over their far left — just as in 1968. On one hand, they do not know how far such confrontations will go; on the other, they know they are being linked with them.

And the extreme left appear to have no intention of backing down, but expecting — if not demanding — the establishment’s embrace.

Further, these confrontations — despite their diminished magnitude thus far — can have similar impact. The 1968 Chicago convention took place during the Vietnam War and Civil Rights movement’s upheaval. It took something of Chicago’s magnitude to jolt America.

Now, it does not. While today’s national divide is not as pronounced as 1968’s, it is still clear — and today’s confrontations only further reinforce it to Democrats’ detriment.