go the way of the —

“The electoral history of the last seven or eight years is pretty abysmal. America’s oldest political party may go the way of the Federalists. It needs to reconnect with grass-roots supporters.”

This is interesting.  Not necessarily the sentiment, which is expressed one way or the other about the two parties at various times since … 1856? … but in that it’s usually expressed with …

“Go the way of the Whigs”.   At 98200 google hits versus 8820 google results for “go the way of the Federalists”.

What prompted this Bernie -ster (incidentally, a backer of a politician who is not a member of the Democratic Party, so why would he care?) to skip the Whig Party and go way back to the original political party to fade into oblivion?  As a general course, the reason the Whig Party gets cited — and it would make sense in context here — is that the party’s demise came by its inability to grapple with the moral issue of the day (slavery), which exposed the party as a constellation of self interested office seekers.

The Federalists’ nail in the coffin happened when they sought New England secession during the War of 1812.  A little bit the opposite — one fractures due to attempted centrism, the other due to extremism.  Or is he suggesting that something will brew with California and a lot of those states?

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