The Democrats’ Silver Lining

The silver lining in the Democrats’ disarray — put into sharp relief by Senator Schumer’s surrender in the budget battle — is the opportunity it offers to steer a course back to the center. The party is “struggling to coalesce behind a political strategy,” the AP’s Matt Brown today reports. The Times’ Ezra Klein laments that “I have never heard Democrats so confused,” not only about “who they are,” but “how and why they lost” in November.Amid this crisis of leadership, it’s all too plausible that the most strident voices in the party — embodied by the so-called “Squad” in the House — would encourage the Democrats to double down on a far-left path. That would mean reflexive opposition to President Trump’s agenda and a refusal to move away from the policies that led to defeat of the Democrats almost across the board in the 2024 elections.Feature the liberal Congresswoman from Massachusetts, Ayanna Pressley, who appears to rule out any soul-searching. “Now is not the time to be moderating our aspirations,” she avers, urging resistance to what she calls Mr. Trump’s “unprecedented power grab” and “lawless actions.” With the midterms “around the corner,” she says, “our most compelling argument will not just be what we stopped but what it is that we seek to advance.”Ms. Pressley’s colleague in the Squad, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, echoes that argument by denouncing Mr. Schumer’s “tremendous mistake” in working with Republicans to stop a shutdown. The Times found “a boiling over of resentments” among younger, more liberal Democrats toward “the gerontocracy leading their party.” Yet a clearer-eyed appraisal suggests the peril of letting the Squad dictate the Democrats’ direction.More moderate Democrats, the AP reports, point to a March CNN poll showing that but three in ten Americans view the Democrats favorably. Congressman Martin Frost reckons that the Democrats are “alarmed” by exit polling in November showing that Mr. Trump “won voters without a college degree and those who made less than $100,000 in annual income,” the AP adds, and that he made inroads with young people and minorities. Yet the influence of far-left non-profits and activist organizations — “the Groups,” for short, per columnist Michael Barone — could make it difficult to tilt the Democrats back to the center. He points to Mr. Klein’s insight that these Groups “don’t really represent the people they presume to speak for.” Hispanic Groups want an open border, yet “Hispanic voters don’t.” And “Black Groups wanted to ‘defund the police.’ Black voters don’t.”This points to a larger problem among the Democrats — a growing lack of political diversity. The party was once “a coalition between liberals, moderates and conservatives,” Mr. Klein says. Yet “as liberals became the dominant coalition partner,” white moderates and conservatives fled. This, by the way, started with the Reagan Democrats, who, rebelling against Senator McGovern, ended up plumping for Reagan — and with good reason.For years the Democrats expected to hold on to power with minority votes. Now, though, moderate and conservative minorities are abandoning the party, too. The Democrats’ leftward tilt has even, it seems, estranged young voters, who were once seen as the party’s great hope. “This is the thing I am the most shocked by in the last four years,” data analyst David Shor says of young people, who were once “the most progressive generation.”This is not to say, in Mr. Shor’s telling, that the path ahead for Republicans is necessarily smooth. He contends that the issues that resonated most for Mr. Trump in November were “the economy, gas prices, immigration and crime.” He senses what he calls “an overemphasis on D.E.I., wokeness and trans issues.” Mr. Shor reckons the GOP is “making a mistake to focus on these things instead of concrete issues that people actually care about.”That marks a caution for Republicans, and a chance for the Democrats — if they can capitalize on it. One moderate Democrat, Representative Seth Moulton, who has faced the ire of activists on the hot-button issue of transgender athletes, says “the Democratic brand absolutely needs to change.” Doing so, though, would mean standing up to elements like the Squad, and the Groups, who could otherwise lead the party toward oblivion.

The Democrats’ Silver Lining

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