By Lila Patel @Adobe Stock
Fighting for Gov’t Waste and Inefficiency
Somewhere between the desert and the wilderness is where Kimberley A. Strassel pinpoints Democrats. The Donald Trump thumping has left them without “power, a leader or a message, and their current, near-total irrelevance is one result.”
Mr. Trump blazes his way through Washington while Democrats—a day late, and two topics short—stage stand-ins outside the Treasury building, (Senator) Chuck Schumer shout-gasping “We will win!”
Win what, wonders Ms. Strassel. How can the Democrat Party effectively oppose Mr. Trump’s worldview without formulating a coherent one of its own?
Many Democrats rolled out of the election acknowledging the urgent need for a change in direction—for moderation, an end to cultural radicalism, a reconnect with working-class Americans. They immediately crashed into the left-wing base, threatening political death to heretics. Even if the party had the spine to push back, who exactly on the Democratic bench even remembers how to be a moderate?
Rules for Radicals
The rapid collapse of the Party was years in the making, continues Ms. Strassel.
The left’s takeover of the Democratic Party began with the rise of Barack Obama and it steadily eradicated dissenting voices. Nancy Pelosi’s “majority makers”—the Blue Dogs and moderates who won her the speakership in 2006—were made to support unpopular legislation and paid for it in lost elections.
Progressives targeted and polarized other holdouts, picked them off in primaries, or drove them to resignation. It was Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.”
The Party Litmus Test
Then came the Green New Deal and the Squad’s wild proposals: open border, Medicare for all – “a program of socialism that traditional Democrats initially rejected, (and now) is mainstream thinking.”
Who even remembers the politics of Sens. Mark Pryor, Evan Bayh and Mary Landrieu, much less those of John Breaux, Sam Nunn and Fritz Hollings? Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema tried imposing a smidgen of fiscal sanity and energy reality on Joe Biden’s agenda. Their reward was to be hounded in their homes, chased into bathrooms by activists, and discouraged from seeking re-election.
Democrats Forgetting to Embrace Moderation
Today’s Democratic “moderate” is a lawmaker who ventures the occasional criticism of Hamas or of men in women’s sports while hurrying to flag his support for gun control, climate absolutism, racial “equity” and the “human rights” of government-provided health, housing, education and daycare. To agree with Bernie Sanders only 95% of the time is, in today’s Democratic Party, iconoclastic.
A Useful Idiot for Republicans
The most prominent example is Pennsylvania’s Sen. John Fetterman. This isn’t being met with open arms. At a recent anti-Trump protest, Pennsylvanians lumped Mr. Fetterman into their tirade, while Fetterman staffers keep resigning in protest. One recent ex-employee derided him as “a useful idiot for Republicans.”
Some Democrats seem not to have learned what a political loser Kamala Harris’s progressive agenda was. Perhaps they are now learning.
What to do with an ash heap of a political platform, one nonetheless rigidly enforced by liberal shock troops, and no charismatic figure with the spine or know-how to lead a change of direction? Engage muscle memory and do the easy: fight, fight, fight.
Thus, the bizarre sight of Democrats rallying fervently in favor of government waste, fraud, and inefficiency. Expect this to continue.
A Recipe for Intellectual Stagnation
The Democrat Party’s departure from the modern conservative movement (“defined by its innovative ideas, from school choice to civil-service reform”) sits unnaturally in “a movement that has long prized individualism and entrepreneurship and condemned the left’s collectivism.”
It mistakes the goal of party unity (the act of members compromising on strongly held positions for a legislative victory) with the tyranny of party conformity (think like we do, or get the boot).
Look how that worked out for Democrats.
If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for the Richardcyoung.com free weekly email.
