Reality Check from the NYT
"purpose-built to alienate the middle of this country and the middle of the ideological spectrum"
Is Trump making things harder or easier for Democrats?
On the one hand, Trump’s brief honeymoon with voters is over. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene has had enough!
On the other hand, the dark magic has returned: while Trump is repelling swing voters, he is also inflaming a reaction from the left that can make Democrats even less popular. And make MAGA electorally viable by default.
The New York Times’s masterful guest essayist, Thomas Edsall, published a major analysis of this dynamic recently. Here’s the upshot:
Trump hasn’t cleared a path for Democratic renewal — he’s possibly made one far less likely. By casting himself as the nemesis of progressive excess, he has paradoxically strengthened their hold on the Democratic imagination.
His heavy-handed assault on D.E.I. and campus speech codes hasn’t prompted soul-searching on the left; it has supplied a new grievance narrative, confirming for activists that they were right all along, that the backlash proves the threat. Victimhood, once claimed, is rarely surrendered.
It is as if, Westwood concluded, “Democrats are engineering a super-strain of progressive in a lab, purpose-built to alienate the middle of this country and the middle of the ideological spectrum.
You can read the full thing here, featuring Welcome’s Deciding to Win research along with an array of compelling perspectives - Matthew Yglesias, Yascha Mounk, Noah Smith, Lanae Erickson, Adam Jentleson, Musa al-Gharbi, and more.
In some ways, Trump has made the job harder. While generic ballot polls show Democrats ahead, they are far from their 2018 highs.
But one thing does feel the same as last time: Trump is getting the left to repeat the mistakes of the Biden era.
In dealing with the Woke left that has a stranglehold on the Democratic Party, one cannot dismiss the challenge that this is a religious group in the same league as Fundamentalist Christians. They are driven by faith in their Marxist ideology. Logic is the very mode of thought that faith denies. As a member of NCSE, who deals with creationists, I would suggest that one try the approach that has worked best in convincing them to allow the teaching of evolution. Respect their right to their views. Do not rail at them. Avoid ad hominem attacks. The next suggestion is the tough one. We in NCSE note, respectfully, that teaching creationism is against the law. What Welcome Party members must use, is the fact of the polls. In any case, there can be no compromise in our party's platform, or its language will be used against us on our candidates. (NCSE is the National Center for Science Education)