Conservatives in the Democratic Party are a dead issue... Not going to happen. For all the talk... All the pretty speeches about the big tent? The Democrats view and treat apostacy even worse than the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Look how many they have tried to run out of town, county, State & Country for not voting in lock step.
Public Disagreement is not acceptable. Although some like Manchin who had his own power base could push things. But these days what happens to ANYONE who dares question the perfection of ever-increasing Illegal Immigration? Or even dares to suggest that biology might actually affect athletic ability? It aint pretty...
And God help anyone who points out the absurdity of people making 6-7 figures lecturing people who have never made more than $40K a year on their "Privilege"
And anyone who tries to put the interests of the Working Class above the Brahmin Left? I believe the proper quote is "Burn Them! Burn Them!" Or even suggests the Working Class might have legitimate grievances...
There are and will be no Conservatives in the Democratic Party.... If only because the Party won't allow or tolerate them.
She would articulate middle of the road solutions, but the those to the left would be infuriated. Ironically, she did grow up in poverty, living with her family in an abandoned gas station for a while. I don't look for politicians to "stand for anything". Just make sure the wheels of sensible government keep turning for goodness's sake - save the virtue signaling for the campaign trail.
Then we force the issue... One thing I've noticed about white liberals who publicly style themselves as being "quite liberal" is many of them are fairly-to-pretty allergic to specifics (yard-sign liberalism, anyone?). A liberal social culture, in my mind, only works if people "mind their own business" and don't ask too many questions. One way to put some dents into that framework, I think, would be to begin lifting up inquisitive minds who care more about the truth than in being in good standing among their "white liberal" peer groups. Fostering that (implicitly) more confrontational intellectual attitude begins in grade school and in how we parent our children.
On the other side of the issue, and this may be more of a "me" thing, the descriptor "conservative" may have too cultural baggage from the American South. If I'm from New England or one of our great Midwestern cities, maybe we should begin using the phrase "traditionalist Democrat". Thereby conveying one's traditionalist affinities without falling into Southern framings.
I've been asking for years for a definition of any and all the jargon words they love (if you can't think of any, wait five minutes and they'll coin another) and no one has ever been willing to get specific. The whole thing is about emotions, identity narrative and power. Intellectual queries are not welcome.
"Name it, shame it". Yes, elitist social liberals will get creative in fighting back, and pretend in their delusional arrogance that they're unfazed by the burgeoning social pressure, but the more people we equip--right, left, and center--to begin calling their baloney salad out, well, there IS power in expanding the critique into something deeper than mere virtue signaling.
The charge of virtue signaling, IMO, is just scratching the surface. Why are they virtue signaling? In a competitive world that's all about finding a distinguishing edge, I think many of them are, in part, piggybacking off of the hard-fought efforts of minority groups to further their own professional and social advancement. No doubt some of their sentiment is genuine, but a sobering question, to me anyway, is why would anyone aspire to join a friend-group that traffics in feel-good platitudes at the expense of the truth. What do some of our young people want from these "white liberals"? Respectability? Social power? To be one of the "cool kids"? The whole thing kind of disgusts me. Again, education is supposed to be for challenging established cliques, not joining them.
I remember a quip from P.J. O'Rourke about George H.W. Bush wanting a real conservative as a running mate, but Lloyd Bentsen was already taken.
The Democrats are the Party of Angry Women who have zero interest in sharing power a demographic they loathe.
The Democrats are benefiting from Trump Fatigue and may even squeak out the Senate along with the House, but all their energies will quickly go into impeachment.
We remain a closely divided country where each side despises the other.
I don't agree with the assertion that "we remain a closely divided country where each side despises the other." Not one bit.
My lived experience is that most left- and right-leaning people coexist just fine, and that there's plenty of room on both sides to respect differences of opinion.
I'll cheerfully toss the media under the bus here: in true MSM fashion, they all find the most ridiculous caricatures of each side, give them a megaphone, and then hyperventilate accordingly. The NYT is just as bad as Fox News; they just sit on different sides of the same dung heap.
So yes, if you read mainstream media, you'll imagine that we're on the brink of civil war. But in reality, I think there's a large "middle" in this country with plenty of healthy political diversity.
That said: from a marketing perspective, I don't know how Democrats will shake the perception of being the party of angry suburban box-wine-and-Xanax women. Republicans have made that label stick, and the Dems have a lot of work ahead of them to prove themselves otherwise.
- In blue states, blue cities, and PMC careers, you have to hide being a conservative or you'll be shamed, scorned and possibly informally blackballed. Your name will certainly implicitly find its way to the top of the list when your firm has to reduce headcount.
- I've bitten my tongue in a million conversations about how conservatives are racists, nazis, racists, bigots, intolerant, and filled with hate. I've heard it from my parents, I've heard it from friends, I've even heard it from my wife (when we met I was an atheist and she was a Christian. We've since switched places).
- I'm in nursing school right now - so a far, far cry from Harvard. The liberal students identified each other on day 1 by choosing topics like "healthcare for trans women[sic]". The conservatives went underground and we only found each other through cryptic group chat messages after Charlie Kirk's assassination.
- my conservative friends cried in the car before the social science and humanities classes because of the 3 hours of hate they'd be facing. Just today in school I heard the United States declared to be a third world nation. I don't want to fail, so I said nothing.
- I'm not complaining. I'm just identifying who the left is. It's their nature to hate. It's not a "bothsidism". It is highly asymmetrical.
I appreciate your comment. I was basing my assessment on having lived in two blue cities in two red states—in both cases, in neighborhoods with a healthy socioeconomic and demographic mix. And having worked in industries that have felt pretty politically mixed.
Colleges and universities are different (and arguably more homogenous) environments, and I agree that many of them trend strongly towards the left (I finished my last degree in 2019, when wokeism was alive and well). Your experience there is consistent with what I found: an alarming trend among many stridently leftist young people to put into practice the very discrimination and closed-mindedness they claimed to eschew. I attribute much of that to youth, as most college students haven't spent much time in the real world and are easily swayed by idealism. Some of the ultra-right could exhibit the same traits, but it seemed more prevalent among the leftists.
I tend to agree with this. I dont see people despising each other in everyday life. Unfortunately both our political and media environments have evolved to elevate the fringes.
Gosh, I want to move to wherever you live! I'm a conservative Democrat in one of the bluest dots on the map, and I feel like if I expressed any public doubts whatsoever about allowed unfettered immigration, or letting biological men play women's sports, or anything to do with identity politics, it would turn full-on Salem witch trial here.
The funny thing about being a conservative Democrat is that one is the truest form of the species. True democracy is actually very conservative! Remember that whole Prop 8 thing in CA? Where all the black Southern Californians tipped the vote against gay marriage?
Would abortion really hold a popular majority if it were discussed openly and the full details put out for public viewing?
Across the Western world, voters have consistently said they want less immigration across the board and the native populations of Europe, whom the Brahmins would describe if they were any other color but White as Indigenous", are becoming increasingly restless as they are being made minorities in their own homelands by immigration. The votes against immigration are both conservative and democratic.
There are so many other examples both in the current moment and in our history that show that being a true Democrat means that you should rightfully be more conservative than most in the party today because to be a true Democrat means that you actually represent the real people of this nation.
Surely not everyone despises each other, but we no longer agree on even basic mathematical facts. It is hard to see how a rift that deep heals quickly.
Ruy you are constantly committing thought crime, frustrating the folk who now run the dnc and losing readership.
The democrats who agree with you are in a situation similar to the jews in Germany circa 1938-39. They just can’t believe their neighbors would do that.
You're missing something absolutely fundamental. You are confusing between liberals and progressives, and from the numbers you cite probably lumping them together. There is nothing inopportune about the liberals - who do not want to "defund the police," encourage gender exploration in infants or open the border to all comers. The progressives, meanwhile, are causing tremendous and possibly irreparable harm -- but they are NOT 59% of the party or even half of that. Americans have very much confused the issue by thinking "liberal" means far left, and anyone who tries to deal with this historically or internationally has to engage in awkward translations, not unlike explaining the Electoral College lunacy or why Americans stick to a system in which no one knows how many ounces there are in a gallon nor inches in a mile.
I agree, but that is not how Dem politicians voted under Biden. Dems were in near lockstep over spending, Energy and Immigration. The few that dared dissent, were quickly politically fragged.
Case in point, there are 200 million vehicles on US roads. If every American cheered EVs and could somehow afford to junk their ICE cars and trucks, our grid could never come close to powering that many EVs, even if chargers magically fell from the sky. Electricity is a delivery system, not energy. Yet Dems cheered Net Zero as if it was real possibility, let alone economically viable.
Ditto for the "Border is Secure" crowd. That went on for years, until Abbott and De Santis shipped a tiny portion of migrants to Blue Cities. If "liberals" still exist they are mute, for all practical purposes, at least in DC.
The vast majority of politically active voters do not have the faintest idea about the difference between liberal, progressive, and leftist. They just take marching orders from MSNBC. If the proposition that 'some women have penises' filters from academia to Rachel Maddow, then anyone who thinks women have vaginas is a hate-filled bigot.
"They just take marching orders from MSNBC." Bingo. An inability to truly think for themselves apart from liberal social milieus. Isn't one of the prime points of getting an education about learning how to think for oneself? Too many liberals and progressives have bastardized that laudable goal and successfully incorporated their left-leaning peers into a new social clique with education as a mutual binding force. In other words, just enough education so that I can be respectable, but not enough whereby I can truly learn to think for myself.
Out of curiosity, when is the last time anyone here ever heard in discussion an example of why the number of inches in a mile or the number of (fluid) ounces in a gallon actually mattered? We do now have a classical liberal party, Liberal Party USA.
And if someone tells you that they immediately know the weight of a liter of water, they're wrong. I didn't specify the temperature or the pressure. Does the temperature matter? Yes above 3.98 centigrade (39 and a bit Fahrenheit) water expands, including sea water, so a liter of water weighs less. And a kilogram of water is larger. That's a fair part of current ocean level rise.
I can imagine two different things you might mean, either that those specific Democrats are the ones pushing hard-left progressivism now, or that (as JMan suggests, I think) their taking a more centrist position inflamed the hard-left and spurred them to purge the centrists.
I’m not sure which you mean, and not sure I see direct evidence that either is true. Both might be true to some extent but I can’t see either as uniquely causative.
All that I have seen happen: 1. Men have moved to vote R. 2. Women who love and want to protect the men in their family and friend groups moved to vote R. The Democratic Party I desperately wanted Biden to bring back is just gone. Everyone is scared of their voters or activists. It's disheartening, which is why I will again vote R this year. I am not voting for anyone, only against.
You’re not the liberal patriot anymore or beholden to those funding streams. Maybe it’s time to make the case that moderates need to leave the Democratic Party. Either join MAGA, which is basically conservative 90s democrats, or start a new party.
Shapiro (1) was for school choice while campaigning, once elected was against it, (2) he looked like a total idiot claiming there was some sort of measles epidemic in PA that was RFK Jr.'s fault, and (3) the poor sap thinks dem voters will nominate a Jewish man.
A Democrat is not permitted to talk about illegal immigrants on welfare or black crime in our streets or highly qualified young Asian and white men being turned away from top flight colleges because in the past women and blacks were turned away. Abortion until birth, men showering with our daughters and children being mutilated in pursuit of the impossible are also off limits. Who wouldn’t want to be a member of such a party? Just anyone with half a brain.
I am what many Democrats believe to be the vilest kind of human being in the United States right now: a woman who fights for the restoration of women's sex-based rights.
Once upon a time, there were Democrats who saw their party being pulled to the left, realized this would disconnect the party from a majority of the electorate, and decided to do something about it. They organized as the Blue Dog Democrat caucus in the party and f0ormed the Democratic Leadership Council. They pulled the party back to the center and successfully helped Bill Clinton win two terms as President.
The Left saw that as a cautionary tale and they have vowed never to let it happen again. Any Democrats who try to organize a centrist or moderate movement within the party, or who even espouse conservative-leaning views, are targets for Left-led purges and purity tests. There are no mechanisms for the party to promote diversity of thought or tolerance of anything but Left orthodoxy. DSA and hard Left Democrats advertise their intention to primary normies, but the party does not lay down criteria for belonging to the party or principles who which Democratic candidates must adhere is they want access to the Democratic Party primary ballot.
This will not end well for the Democratic Party or for the United States of America.
I would infer that it is a lack of courage by blue dogs and moderates who don't have the guts to buck the suicidal trend to the far, far crazy Left. They see what happened to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin withdraw into the background. At its root, the basic principles are hidden like the head of a turtle in the face of a challenge. I see little hope. For every far Left nut that gains positives, it is another notch in the belt of the crazy Right. And we who read this with concern, are left in the middle.
Ruy your piece in USA Today was great. This is better. It is a testament to your common sense that most Reps would agree with you. Find a slate of candidates to run on the above, and they would win in a land slide, labeled Dem or Rep.
Ironically, Reapportionment has likely been on the Dem radar since Biden's election. It would explain the purposeful dissolution of the border. Blue States need bodies. Americans with options, increasingly refuse to dwell under Blue Rule. Thus "moderate" Dems with little enthusiasm for deportation of even convicted murderers and child rapists. Every person counts in the Census.
Toss in the changes in Sect 2 of the Voting Rights Act and Dems have a bleak mathematical electoral future. Without a mass policy remodel, flooding the US with new arrivals now, to stoke Blue State populations, would also populate a future mass amnesty, if Dems retake the 2028 WH, House and Senate. A similar playbook is being used all over the West, where domestic populations increasingly reject Progressive policies.
Likewise, the Dem sudden fondness for packing SCOTUS and ending the Electoral College likely has less to do with Trump, then Dems frightened federalism may morph them into a minority Party, just as Blue cities and states require massive federal bailouts.
Trump may cause Rep Midterm slaughter, but he is likely to be far less helpful in 2028. The Dem last chance to reclaim the WH, House and Senate, before Self Sorting, Sect 2 Redistricting, and Reapportionment combine to render the Dem climb to the WH, far more steep.
In fairness to Platner he did more than "a stint in the Marines". I think Even kind of under represented what 3 combat tours in a very busy time in Iraq were. I also don't think Platner misrepresented his persona either, he'd probably be a lot of fun to go shooting with at a long distance range. But... His rhetoric sounded like something from the squad, humorous enough, and I certainly agree with his grievances, it was in the remedies that he seemed way out in left field, as do they all.
I got Ms Barker's book (from the library of course) and am glad I stuck it out through all the money raising parts to the end where I was able to make more sense of some things I'd been thinking. Barker points out that the Republicans also are not necessarily aligned with working class priorities either.
What would convince me that a Democratic candidate was someone I could support would be if they could break with voting with the party depending on the issue. To take that kind of a stand a candidate would face fierce opposition in the primaries funded by groups with lots of money and the loss of support of the far left even in the general.
Our Nebraska "working man" phony "independent" senatorial candidate just got caught on a hot mic saying this about Nebraska rural voters: ""Billy Bob in f------ Red Cloud, Nebraska, who lives next to the f----- Trump store as you pull into town is waving the Trump flag. All he knows is he's on the winning team," Osborn said. "He's been so effective at taking Billy Bob, his wife Mary Jane or Mary Jo, telling them, look we're winning, look we're winning, you're on the winning team and that's all they care about because their lives probably suck so f---." Lovely.
I'm strongly of the belief we're moving out of the liberal neoliberal era of our politics, and into a conservative populist era that will run 30 or so years, and honestly it doesn't seem that bad to me. And I don't think it'll be that bad to most former Democratic voters.
Trump has a weird effect on people's brains, I seem to be immune to it, which is probably the number one reason I quit voting Democrat. I don't see red when he appears on screen, he doesn't act like a fascist, a dictator, a racist, in fact he acts very much like the New York City conservative Democrat he is, though his politics are but a side hobby to his true passion of being famous. Doesn't bother me, and his policies don't bother me.
But when he leaves we're going to be left with just the conservative populism and none of the Trump, and with that we aren't going to see MAGA numbers fall off, we're going to see them swell. All the "muh Presidential" Boomers will love Vance. Low information normies won't be swayed by the over-the-top liberal propaganda that actually sticks to well to Trump without the giant belligerent personality to stick it to.
Yeah many of the sacred cows of academia and the coastal city-states will get slaughtered, I have a feeling hardly enough of them. And people will have lower taxes, more secure borders, and tariffs on foreign goods (and the fact that liberals are still harping on tariffs, when they've had THIS MUCH TIME to educate themselves on economics and still remain as clueless about them as they are what a woman is, tells me there is so 4th quarter comeback in the cards here). It won't be that bad, in fact, I have a feeling a GOP candidate will rack up a close-to-or-over 400 electoral vote victory at some point in the 2030s or 2040s. You aren't fighting your daddy's GOP, it's not compassionate forever wars and a bridge back to serfdom anymore.
Dems could easily outflank the Republicans on the two key issues of trade and immigration if it decided to.
For instance, instead of ICE deportations, a biometric Social Security card would be a much more efficient and humane way to enforce our immigration laws.
And instead of Trump's slapdash tariffs, a new piece of legislation targeted exclusively at imports manufactured in low-wage countries: a "wage-price equalization tax."
Unfortunately, for this to happen would require an internal realignment every bit as radical as the one that occurred inside the Republican party. Would need to be a self-financed billionaire candidate, only not as crazy as Trump.
Conservatives in the Democratic Party are a dead issue... Not going to happen. For all the talk... All the pretty speeches about the big tent? The Democrats view and treat apostacy even worse than the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Look how many they have tried to run out of town, county, State & Country for not voting in lock step.
Public Disagreement is not acceptable. Although some like Manchin who had his own power base could push things. But these days what happens to ANYONE who dares question the perfection of ever-increasing Illegal Immigration? Or even dares to suggest that biology might actually affect athletic ability? It aint pretty...
And God help anyone who points out the absurdity of people making 6-7 figures lecturing people who have never made more than $40K a year on their "Privilege"
And anyone who tries to put the interests of the Working Class above the Brahmin Left? I believe the proper quote is "Burn Them! Burn Them!" Or even suggests the Working Class might have legitimate grievances...
There are and will be no Conservatives in the Democratic Party.... If only because the Party won't allow or tolerate them.
yes. Manchin, Sinema both brilliant I thought. Fetterman will be primaried I am sure
Fetterman probably won't even run as a Democrat. He would have no chance. Pennsylvania Democrats detest him.
he still votes with them most of the time. their loss
“I’m a lifelong Democrat who votes overwhelmingly with my party—and should the Senate flip in November, I will still be the 51st vote that I ran on.”
Hatred for Israel and total reflexive opposition to Trump are red line issues.
Did Sinema stand for anything?
She would articulate middle of the road solutions, but the those to the left would be infuriated. Ironically, she did grow up in poverty, living with her family in an abandoned gas station for a while. I don't look for politicians to "stand for anything". Just make sure the wheels of sensible government keep turning for goodness's sake - save the virtue signaling for the campaign trail.
Then we force the issue... One thing I've noticed about white liberals who publicly style themselves as being "quite liberal" is many of them are fairly-to-pretty allergic to specifics (yard-sign liberalism, anyone?). A liberal social culture, in my mind, only works if people "mind their own business" and don't ask too many questions. One way to put some dents into that framework, I think, would be to begin lifting up inquisitive minds who care more about the truth than in being in good standing among their "white liberal" peer groups. Fostering that (implicitly) more confrontational intellectual attitude begins in grade school and in how we parent our children.
On the other side of the issue, and this may be more of a "me" thing, the descriptor "conservative" may have too cultural baggage from the American South. If I'm from New England or one of our great Midwestern cities, maybe we should begin using the phrase "traditionalist Democrat". Thereby conveying one's traditionalist affinities without falling into Southern framings.
I've been asking for years for a definition of any and all the jargon words they love (if you can't think of any, wait five minutes and they'll coin another) and no one has ever been willing to get specific. The whole thing is about emotions, identity narrative and power. Intellectual queries are not welcome.
"Name it, shame it". Yes, elitist social liberals will get creative in fighting back, and pretend in their delusional arrogance that they're unfazed by the burgeoning social pressure, but the more people we equip--right, left, and center--to begin calling their baloney salad out, well, there IS power in expanding the critique into something deeper than mere virtue signaling.
The charge of virtue signaling, IMO, is just scratching the surface. Why are they virtue signaling? In a competitive world that's all about finding a distinguishing edge, I think many of them are, in part, piggybacking off of the hard-fought efforts of minority groups to further their own professional and social advancement. No doubt some of their sentiment is genuine, but a sobering question, to me anyway, is why would anyone aspire to join a friend-group that traffics in feel-good platitudes at the expense of the truth. What do some of our young people want from these "white liberals"? Respectability? Social power? To be one of the "cool kids"? The whole thing kind of disgusts me. Again, education is supposed to be for challenging established cliques, not joining them.
When USAID stopped giving away our money the Democrats went suddenly broke. Humm ?
This might be the best article I've read about partisan politics in 2026. Thank you.
I remember a quip from P.J. O'Rourke about George H.W. Bush wanting a real conservative as a running mate, but Lloyd Bentsen was already taken.
The Democrats are the Party of Angry Women who have zero interest in sharing power a demographic they loathe.
The Democrats are benefiting from Trump Fatigue and may even squeak out the Senate along with the House, but all their energies will quickly go into impeachment.
We remain a closely divided country where each side despises the other.
I don't agree with the assertion that "we remain a closely divided country where each side despises the other." Not one bit.
My lived experience is that most left- and right-leaning people coexist just fine, and that there's plenty of room on both sides to respect differences of opinion.
I'll cheerfully toss the media under the bus here: in true MSM fashion, they all find the most ridiculous caricatures of each side, give them a megaphone, and then hyperventilate accordingly. The NYT is just as bad as Fox News; they just sit on different sides of the same dung heap.
So yes, if you read mainstream media, you'll imagine that we're on the brink of civil war. But in reality, I think there's a large "middle" in this country with plenty of healthy political diversity.
That said: from a marketing perspective, I don't know how Democrats will shake the perception of being the party of angry suburban box-wine-and-Xanax women. Republicans have made that label stick, and the Dems have a lot of work ahead of them to prove themselves otherwise.
This is simply 100% false.
- In blue states, blue cities, and PMC careers, you have to hide being a conservative or you'll be shamed, scorned and possibly informally blackballed. Your name will certainly implicitly find its way to the top of the list when your firm has to reduce headcount.
- I've bitten my tongue in a million conversations about how conservatives are racists, nazis, racists, bigots, intolerant, and filled with hate. I've heard it from my parents, I've heard it from friends, I've even heard it from my wife (when we met I was an atheist and she was a Christian. We've since switched places).
- I'm in nursing school right now - so a far, far cry from Harvard. The liberal students identified each other on day 1 by choosing topics like "healthcare for trans women[sic]". The conservatives went underground and we only found each other through cryptic group chat messages after Charlie Kirk's assassination.
- my conservative friends cried in the car before the social science and humanities classes because of the 3 hours of hate they'd be facing. Just today in school I heard the United States declared to be a third world nation. I don't want to fail, so I said nothing.
- I'm not complaining. I'm just identifying who the left is. It's their nature to hate. It's not a "bothsidism". It is highly asymmetrical.
I appreciate your comment. I was basing my assessment on having lived in two blue cities in two red states—in both cases, in neighborhoods with a healthy socioeconomic and demographic mix. And having worked in industries that have felt pretty politically mixed.
Colleges and universities are different (and arguably more homogenous) environments, and I agree that many of them trend strongly towards the left (I finished my last degree in 2019, when wokeism was alive and well). Your experience there is consistent with what I found: an alarming trend among many stridently leftist young people to put into practice the very discrimination and closed-mindedness they claimed to eschew. I attribute much of that to youth, as most college students haven't spent much time in the real world and are easily swayed by idealism. Some of the ultra-right could exhibit the same traits, but it seemed more prevalent among the leftists.
Yes there is a big difference between the world of normals and the world of elite "progressives."
I tend to agree with this. I dont see people despising each other in everyday life. Unfortunately both our political and media environments have evolved to elevate the fringes.
Gosh, I want to move to wherever you live! I'm a conservative Democrat in one of the bluest dots on the map, and I feel like if I expressed any public doubts whatsoever about allowed unfettered immigration, or letting biological men play women's sports, or anything to do with identity politics, it would turn full-on Salem witch trial here.
Indeed. The people most likely to support re-education camps for Trump voters have a Hate Has No Home Here sign on their front lawn.
The funny thing about being a conservative Democrat is that one is the truest form of the species. True democracy is actually very conservative! Remember that whole Prop 8 thing in CA? Where all the black Southern Californians tipped the vote against gay marriage?
Would abortion really hold a popular majority if it were discussed openly and the full details put out for public viewing?
Across the Western world, voters have consistently said they want less immigration across the board and the native populations of Europe, whom the Brahmins would describe if they were any other color but White as Indigenous", are becoming increasingly restless as they are being made minorities in their own homelands by immigration. The votes against immigration are both conservative and democratic.
There are so many other examples both in the current moment and in our history that show that being a true Democrat means that you should rightfully be more conservative than most in the party today because to be a true Democrat means that you actually represent the real people of this nation.
Surely not everyone despises each other, but we no longer agree on even basic mathematical facts. It is hard to see how a rift that deep heals quickly.
Mathematical and biological facts.
Ruy you are constantly committing thought crime, frustrating the folk who now run the dnc and losing readership.
The democrats who agree with you are in a situation similar to the jews in Germany circa 1938-39. They just can’t believe their neighbors would do that.
Flash. They will if they can.
You're missing something absolutely fundamental. You are confusing between liberals and progressives, and from the numbers you cite probably lumping them together. There is nothing inopportune about the liberals - who do not want to "defund the police," encourage gender exploration in infants or open the border to all comers. The progressives, meanwhile, are causing tremendous and possibly irreparable harm -- but they are NOT 59% of the party or even half of that. Americans have very much confused the issue by thinking "liberal" means far left, and anyone who tries to deal with this historically or internationally has to engage in awkward translations, not unlike explaining the Electoral College lunacy or why Americans stick to a system in which no one knows how many ounces there are in a gallon nor inches in a mile.
I agree, but that is not how Dem politicians voted under Biden. Dems were in near lockstep over spending, Energy and Immigration. The few that dared dissent, were quickly politically fragged.
Case in point, there are 200 million vehicles on US roads. If every American cheered EVs and could somehow afford to junk their ICE cars and trucks, our grid could never come close to powering that many EVs, even if chargers magically fell from the sky. Electricity is a delivery system, not energy. Yet Dems cheered Net Zero as if it was real possibility, let alone economically viable.
Ditto for the "Border is Secure" crowd. That went on for years, until Abbott and De Santis shipped a tiny portion of migrants to Blue Cities. If "liberals" still exist they are mute, for all practical purposes, at least in DC.
The vast majority of politically active voters do not have the faintest idea about the difference between liberal, progressive, and leftist. They just take marching orders from MSNBC. If the proposition that 'some women have penises' filters from academia to Rachel Maddow, then anyone who thinks women have vaginas is a hate-filled bigot.
"They just take marching orders from MSNBC." Bingo. An inability to truly think for themselves apart from liberal social milieus. Isn't one of the prime points of getting an education about learning how to think for oneself? Too many liberals and progressives have bastardized that laudable goal and successfully incorporated their left-leaning peers into a new social clique with education as a mutual binding force. In other words, just enough education so that I can be respectable, but not enough whereby I can truly learn to think for myself.
Out of curiosity, when is the last time anyone here ever heard in discussion an example of why the number of inches in a mile or the number of (fluid) ounces in a gallon actually mattered? We do now have a classical liberal party, Liberal Party USA.
And if someone tells you that they immediately know the weight of a liter of water, they're wrong. I didn't specify the temperature or the pressure. Does the temperature matter? Yes above 3.98 centigrade (39 and a bit Fahrenheit) water expands, including sea water, so a liter of water weighs less. And a kilogram of water is larger. That's a fair part of current ocean level rise.
Nope. Conservative Clinton DLC Democrats are what got us here.
I can imagine two different things you might mean, either that those specific Democrats are the ones pushing hard-left progressivism now, or that (as JMan suggests, I think) their taking a more centrist position inflamed the hard-left and spurred them to purge the centrists.
I’m not sure which you mean, and not sure I see direct evidence that either is true. Both might be true to some extent but I can’t see either as uniquely causative.
I always appreciate a novel take.
I'm guessing "if we just implemented leftism back in the 90s then we wouldn't have extra-leftism in the 2020s"?
All that I have seen happen: 1. Men have moved to vote R. 2. Women who love and want to protect the men in their family and friend groups moved to vote R. The Democratic Party I desperately wanted Biden to bring back is just gone. Everyone is scared of their voters or activists. It's disheartening, which is why I will again vote R this year. I am not voting for anyone, only against.
True dat. The last candidate I voted FOR was Reagan. Since then I’ve voted AGAINST the bigger idiot.
You’re not the liberal patriot anymore or beholden to those funding streams. Maybe it’s time to make the case that moderates need to leave the Democratic Party. Either join MAGA, which is basically conservative 90s democrats, or start a new party.
It would be nice to have more than one Democrat who didn’t hate the US.
Fetterman and Shapiro come to mind.
Shapiro (1) was for school choice while campaigning, once elected was against it, (2) he looked like a total idiot claiming there was some sort of measles epidemic in PA that was RFK Jr.'s fault, and (3) the poor sap thinks dem voters will nominate a Jewish man.
Two! There is hope!
A Democrat is not permitted to talk about illegal immigrants on welfare or black crime in our streets or highly qualified young Asian and white men being turned away from top flight colleges because in the past women and blacks were turned away. Abortion until birth, men showering with our daughters and children being mutilated in pursuit of the impossible are also off limits. Who wouldn’t want to be a member of such a party? Just anyone with half a brain.
I am what many Democrats believe to be the vilest kind of human being in the United States right now: a woman who fights for the restoration of women's sex-based rights.
I guess I'm a conservative Democrat now.
And who the heck will you be voting for that aligns with your beliefs?
Once upon a time, there were Democrats who saw their party being pulled to the left, realized this would disconnect the party from a majority of the electorate, and decided to do something about it. They organized as the Blue Dog Democrat caucus in the party and f0ormed the Democratic Leadership Council. They pulled the party back to the center and successfully helped Bill Clinton win two terms as President.
The Left saw that as a cautionary tale and they have vowed never to let it happen again. Any Democrats who try to organize a centrist or moderate movement within the party, or who even espouse conservative-leaning views, are targets for Left-led purges and purity tests. There are no mechanisms for the party to promote diversity of thought or tolerance of anything but Left orthodoxy. DSA and hard Left Democrats advertise their intention to primary normies, but the party does not lay down criteria for belonging to the party or principles who which Democratic candidates must adhere is they want access to the Democratic Party primary ballot.
This will not end well for the Democratic Party or for the United States of America.
I would infer that it is a lack of courage by blue dogs and moderates who don't have the guts to buck the suicidal trend to the far, far crazy Left. They see what happened to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin withdraw into the background. At its root, the basic principles are hidden like the head of a turtle in the face of a challenge. I see little hope. For every far Left nut that gains positives, it is another notch in the belt of the crazy Right. And we who read this with concern, are left in the middle.
Ruy your piece in USA Today was great. This is better. It is a testament to your common sense that most Reps would agree with you. Find a slate of candidates to run on the above, and they would win in a land slide, labeled Dem or Rep.
Ironically, Reapportionment has likely been on the Dem radar since Biden's election. It would explain the purposeful dissolution of the border. Blue States need bodies. Americans with options, increasingly refuse to dwell under Blue Rule. Thus "moderate" Dems with little enthusiasm for deportation of even convicted murderers and child rapists. Every person counts in the Census.
Toss in the changes in Sect 2 of the Voting Rights Act and Dems have a bleak mathematical electoral future. Without a mass policy remodel, flooding the US with new arrivals now, to stoke Blue State populations, would also populate a future mass amnesty, if Dems retake the 2028 WH, House and Senate. A similar playbook is being used all over the West, where domestic populations increasingly reject Progressive policies.
Likewise, the Dem sudden fondness for packing SCOTUS and ending the Electoral College likely has less to do with Trump, then Dems frightened federalism may morph them into a minority Party, just as Blue cities and states require massive federal bailouts.
Trump may cause Rep Midterm slaughter, but he is likely to be far less helpful in 2028. The Dem last chance to reclaim the WH, House and Senate, before Self Sorting, Sect 2 Redistricting, and Reapportionment combine to render the Dem climb to the WH, far more steep.
In fairness to Platner he did more than "a stint in the Marines". I think Even kind of under represented what 3 combat tours in a very busy time in Iraq were. I also don't think Platner misrepresented his persona either, he'd probably be a lot of fun to go shooting with at a long distance range. But... His rhetoric sounded like something from the squad, humorous enough, and I certainly agree with his grievances, it was in the remedies that he seemed way out in left field, as do they all.
I got Ms Barker's book (from the library of course) and am glad I stuck it out through all the money raising parts to the end where I was able to make more sense of some things I'd been thinking. Barker points out that the Republicans also are not necessarily aligned with working class priorities either.
What would convince me that a Democratic candidate was someone I could support would be if they could break with voting with the party depending on the issue. To take that kind of a stand a candidate would face fierce opposition in the primaries funded by groups with lots of money and the loss of support of the far left even in the general.
Not sure of the remedies. Third party maybe.
Our Nebraska "working man" phony "independent" senatorial candidate just got caught on a hot mic saying this about Nebraska rural voters: ""Billy Bob in f------ Red Cloud, Nebraska, who lives next to the f----- Trump store as you pull into town is waving the Trump flag. All he knows is he's on the winning team," Osborn said. "He's been so effective at taking Billy Bob, his wife Mary Jane or Mary Jo, telling them, look we're winning, look we're winning, you're on the winning team and that's all they care about because their lives probably suck so f---." Lovely.
I'm strongly of the belief we're moving out of the liberal neoliberal era of our politics, and into a conservative populist era that will run 30 or so years, and honestly it doesn't seem that bad to me. And I don't think it'll be that bad to most former Democratic voters.
Trump has a weird effect on people's brains, I seem to be immune to it, which is probably the number one reason I quit voting Democrat. I don't see red when he appears on screen, he doesn't act like a fascist, a dictator, a racist, in fact he acts very much like the New York City conservative Democrat he is, though his politics are but a side hobby to his true passion of being famous. Doesn't bother me, and his policies don't bother me.
But when he leaves we're going to be left with just the conservative populism and none of the Trump, and with that we aren't going to see MAGA numbers fall off, we're going to see them swell. All the "muh Presidential" Boomers will love Vance. Low information normies won't be swayed by the over-the-top liberal propaganda that actually sticks to well to Trump without the giant belligerent personality to stick it to.
Yeah many of the sacred cows of academia and the coastal city-states will get slaughtered, I have a feeling hardly enough of them. And people will have lower taxes, more secure borders, and tariffs on foreign goods (and the fact that liberals are still harping on tariffs, when they've had THIS MUCH TIME to educate themselves on economics and still remain as clueless about them as they are what a woman is, tells me there is so 4th quarter comeback in the cards here). It won't be that bad, in fact, I have a feeling a GOP candidate will rack up a close-to-or-over 400 electoral vote victory at some point in the 2030s or 2040s. You aren't fighting your daddy's GOP, it's not compassionate forever wars and a bridge back to serfdom anymore.
..." he doesn't act like a fascist, a dictator, a racist,... What universe do you live in?
A universe where words like "fascist", "dictator" and "racist" have actual definitions instead of being buzzwords.
Dems could easily outflank the Republicans on the two key issues of trade and immigration if it decided to.
For instance, instead of ICE deportations, a biometric Social Security card would be a much more efficient and humane way to enforce our immigration laws.
And instead of Trump's slapdash tariffs, a new piece of legislation targeted exclusively at imports manufactured in low-wage countries: a "wage-price equalization tax."
Unfortunately, for this to happen would require an internal realignment every bit as radical as the one that occurred inside the Republican party. Would need to be a self-financed billionaire candidate, only not as crazy as Trump.
A party has to compete if it wants to win.
Open the border to human traffickers and drug smugglers.
Open the border to everyone who works under the table. Landscapers. Framers. Roofers. Nannies. Etc.