A second, related lesson is that less affinity for parties makes incumbent politicians less safe, generally. That’s because when fewer people bother to engage in party politics, it takes a smaller group of ultra-motivated activists to overturn the traditional order of things.

Hmmm. Ya think?

What all this probably means is that we are living in the era of the upstart. Thirty years ago, when you needed a party infrastructure to make a serious run for higher office, taking it to the establishment was a quixotic venture undertaken on the national level, where a Jesse Jackson or a Pat Buchanan could at least make a powerful statement along the road to obliteration. (Recall Jimmy Carter’s indictment of Jerry Brown in 1976: “Don’t send them a message, send them a president.”)

Those days are gone. The intraparty rebellions now will be increasingly local, sufficiently financed and built around credible candidates – the kind of campaigns that made Barack Obama president and that may yet give us Senator Paul or Senator Sestak. My gosh, these people in Washington are in for it now.

Now, Taibbi notes that this piece isn’t about autonomous movements along the lines of moveone.org and the tea parties–he wants to focus on the internal dynamics of the parties themselves, and his conclusions are worth thinking about. But I think you’ll find that everything he has to say about “intraparty rebellion” extends to the electorate as a whole and that “small orders of ultra-motivated activists” may experience the same startling success working outside of the majors.