Democrats Have a Problem. The Solution is Less Extremism

Thomas Edsall’s weekly opinion column at the NY Times is always a kind of doomscroll for Democrats. Nearly all of the columns have the same premise which goes something like this: Republicans are destroying America and only Democrats can stop them, but there’s a problem. And give Edsall credit for realizing that this setup is evergreen at the NY Times. It is after all a paper for Democrats who are convinced they have all the answers to all the problems caused by everyone else, if only...

Today’s edition of the column fits right into this pattern. It’s titled “Is There a Door No. 3 for Democrats?” Here’s the opening paragraph.

Despite the collapse of support for President Trump — whose unfavorable ratings have grown to 59 percent from 43 percent a week after inauguration — voters continue to hold Democrats in greater disfavor than Republicans.

Republicans are killing us all! But there’s a problem. People hate Democrats even more. And so the rest of the column is about identifying the problem and how to get around it. The problem, according to some recent research, is that many people still think Democrats are too extreme.

Is there anything Democrats can do to break free of a deeply polarized political system in which parties are constantly winning and then losing office as voters reflexively turn against those in power?

Two political scientists, David Broockman at the University of California, Berkeley, and Joshua Kalla at Yale, describe a tentative path to strengthen Democratic performance on Election Day.

Their March 11 paper, “Should Moving to the Middle Win Candidates Votes? It Depends Where Voters Are,” provides evidence to suggest that Democrats and Republicans who moderate their views — not across the board but on very specific issues — can substantially improve their general election margins.

It turns out the wokeness that pervades the party is a big turn off to a lot of people. Certain views in particular have become associated with that.

For Democrats, Broockman and Kalla write, that includes moving toward the center on affirmative action, transgender issues, unauthorized immigration, minor crime enforcement, funding and regulating the police, and the environment.

Let me put this another way. Things normies don’t like include: BLM, Lia Thomas, illegal border crossers, shoplifters, drug addicts, Antifa and Greta Thunberg. These are symbols for a whole set of related policies held by the far left. So if you support some or all of these people and groups, you are pretty far outside the mainstream. Obviously all of these are Squad favorites. AOC and the rest of them may not talk about all of these as much now, but they basically take far-left positions on every one of these issues. And that’s why they’re still only a squad.

Whatever problems Democrats are facing this year, those problems are likely to be greatly magnified after the 2030 Census when California, New York and Illinois all lose seats and Texas and Florida gain them. A spokesman for Third Way, a moderate Democratic group, said the answer was obvious.

Democrats have to reject the extremes and prove they can be trusted to stay in the mainstream. That means acknowledging complexities on social issues and engaging those who are conflicted rather than pushing them away.

It means saying out loud that our asylum system is broken; we must get serious about securing our border; and if someone who is here illegally commits a violent crime, they should be deported. It means demanding accountability for anyone who breaks the law, solving more crimes and getting justice for more victims…

It means making sure every kid in America can read and do math rather than eliminating advanced courses in the name of equity. It means agreeing that we want sports to be fair and student-athletes to be safe, and that’s why sports associations should be making rules about transgender teens participating in sports, but those rules should be different based on sport, age and level of competition.

There’s more but you get the idea. Democrats should loudly move to the center so people aren’t afraid to vote for them. The article then moves on to the question: How did Democrats wind up in this electoral cul de sac?

One is the shift in power of major Democratic interest groups from “organized labor, with its broad-based concerns about economic inequality,” to identity-based interest groups “for people of color, women and the L.G.B.T. community.”

The second “has been the rise of highly educated affluent white liberals, often referred to as ‘the Brahmin Left,’” who “are to the left of people of color on issues of race.”…

My own view is that the ascendance of white college-educated liberals with comfortable incomes constitutes an immovable barrier, at least for now, to the kind of party reforms and policy shifts that the analysts in these groups want to see.

Edsall doesn’t call it wokeness. That word never appears in his column, but it’s clearly what he’s talking about. It’s the shift to identity politics and the dominance of college-educated liberals. Colleges are undeniably the source of wokeness in America and so it makes sense that having more college grads in the party means having more woke people who push these views that most Americans don’t like.

So Democrats have a big problem and it boils down to this. The people who dominate the party would rather be pure and avoid being canceled by other purists than win elections. They might be able to get buy with it this year but from 2030 on this is probably not going to work well for them.

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