In the past few decades, the Democratic Party has undergone a seismic shift. Kitchen table issues like the economy and public safety have been overshadowed by more elitist topics like identity politics, gender ideology, defunding the police, climate change, and the vaguely defined yet rigidly enforced ideology of anti-racism, which sees white supremacy as the force behind every institution in America.
But while activists, lobbyists, and pundits were busy reshaping the Democratic Party, ordinary voters—including the working class, middle-class families, and ethnic minorities—were simply leaving. All of which has stranded a large group of Americans on an island, voters in the center of nowhere.
Two people who have spent years thinking about how the Democratic Party lost its vision are our guests today, political analysts Ruy Teixeira and John Judis. Their new book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, offers up a map to help us understand how liberals lost their way. On today’s episode, guest-hosted by Michael Moynihan, Teixeira and Judis trace the influence of big money forces behind what they call the Democrats’ “shadow party,” and offer a path forward away from the radical cultural issues embraced by party elites and back to core economic issues that matter to the working class, a group that Democrats need to win back if they want to win in 2024.
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“Where have all the Democrats gone?” What a massive fallacy for a title. They control every major institution in this country, even the church. Just a month ago, “the Democrats” won back control of both Houses of Virginia’s Legislature, effectively neutering a very Centrist Republican Governor. In a landslide they enshrined into Ohio’s state constitution the right to terminate the life of an unborn human being. “The Democrats” are well on their way to eradicating the meaning within the words “man” and “woman” even though the differences and distinctions contained within those words are right before our eyes, plain as day. Again in Virginia, “The Democrats” succeeded in rejecting a proposed appointee of Gov. Youngkin to the Virginia School Board. She was a first generation immigrant from India, educated in engineering but she was accused of being a White Supremacist because she wrote something praising the US Constitution. “The Democrats” appear to be alive and well.
I pray with every fiber of my being that “The Democrats” do not win in 2024 because if “The Democrats” win, there will surely be civil war in the formerly United States of America.
I appreciated some of the points made in this conversation, but for the most part it seemed pretty dated and out of touch. I think these authors are profoundly underestimating the radical shift to the left of Gen Z and younger in particular. There are consequences to the ideological capture of our public schools and universities. And I’m pretty concerned that things are only going to get worse, not better. The demographics will win out.
Also, as a 42 year old woman who has been a lifelong Republican (not a member, just always voted that way) I am used to but still resent the tired story that Democrats were the party of the working class, the party of the people, the party who cares about the downtrodden and so forth. Having a difference of opinion about the policies that best bring about the welfare of the people doesn’t mean right-leaning people are heartless, money-loving bigots. We conservatives are looking around at the decay and the insanity and shaking our heads because we saw this all coming clear as day 30 years ago.