It’s the Dems Who Are Extreme?

In a lengthy piece last week, New York Times columnist David Brooks lays out his case for sticking with Joe Biden. Basically, his argument is that Donald Trump cannot be allowed to return to the White House and that Biden is the worst possible choice to stop him… except for all the alternatives.

Brooks deals with every argument against a Biden candidacy that has been on offer, acknowledges its validity in most cases, and concludes that not any one argument nor an accumulation of these arguments is enough to topple Biden as the best chance to keep Trump at bay. I agree, though I reserve the right to change my mind between now and next summer. (Sorry, Gavin.)

But what I want to write about this morning is the point Brooks made near the end of his essay. He cogently analyzes what’s become of the Democratic Party and some of it goes like this:

“According to a Morning Consult poll, Americans rate the Democratic Party as a whole as the more ideologically extreme party by a nine-point margin…

I read that over and over again. Wait just a gosh darn minute here, I kept thinking to myself. The Republicans are the party filled with people who tacitly or explicitly supported an armed attack on the U.S. Capitol that resulted in the deaths of five people and which was intended to stop the certification of a free and fair election. Republicans are the party that has spent all the months since then raising questions about the soundness of a sound election system and conspiring to fix the next election for Trump. And Trump, the closest thing to a fascist who has ever held the presidency, has a 40 point lead for his party’s nomination.

And the American people think it’s the Democrats who are extreme?! What the (heck) is going on? Brooks offers an explanation:

Here are the hard, unpleasant facts: The Republicans have a likely nominee who is facing 91 charges. The Republicans in Congress are so controlled by a group of performative narcissists, the whole House has been reduced to chaos. And yet they are still leading the Democrats in these sorts of polling measures. This is about something deeper than Joe Biden’s age. More and more people are telling pollsters that the Republicans, not the Democrats, care about people like me… Over the last half-century, the Democrats have become increasingly the party of the well-educated metropolitan class.”

Yes, I think that’s precisely it. Brooks nailed it. The problem is that my party has become the party of know-it-all, college-educated snobs, almost all of whom live in big cities and college towns. They look down on anybody who doesn’t have at least a four year degree — in other words they condescend to 70% of Americans. And because they cluster together in tight urban neighborhoods their power is further diminished in legislatures because it’s pretty much impossible to draw enough districts where they have a majority even if you try.

I continue to be a Democrat because the other guys are so bad and because I still agree with the Democrats on most policy issues, but I share the opinion of most Americans when it comes to liberal culture. As I read somewhere else this week, “Liberals believe that God would do what they would do if only he were as well-informed.”

In addition to just the vibe they give off, why, despite the obvious extremism of Republicans, do Americans see Democrats as even more extreme? In a phrase: social issues. My party is way out front — or perceived to be that way — on a host of things from transgender issues to defunding the police (never mind that most Democrats never embraced that notion, we’re talking perceptions here) to permissiveness on crime and homelessness (see Seattle, Portland and San Francisco) to “anti-racism.”

Polls consistently show that the Democratic rank-and-file is moderate, but the media will always flock to those who say the most outrageous things and it’s the nature of moderates that we say boring things. So the face of the party is AOC and the Squad and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And, to be fair, even Joe Biden doesn’t come off as much of a moderate when he keeps trying to make the taxpayers pick up a half trillion dollars in student debt or he tries to sneak through unpopular discriminatory reparations schemes through the back door.

If we really want to prevent Trump’s return and all the horrors attendant to that the thing to do would be to cool it on the “social justice” agenda. Let those changes happen out in the culture first and then catch up with them with laws when it’s safe, if that’s even necessary.

That’s generally the way it works anyway. Even Barack Obama did not support gay marriage in either of his campaigns for president. He cautiously pushed his Vice President, Joe Biden, out there first, and when the waters looked safe, came out in favor of it himself. But even that was when he was a lame duck and he took no actions to back up his support. In fact, there never was a positive government action on the matter. The culture changed. The Supreme Court responded. Justice happened without Congressional or Presidential action.

Same goes for all this other stuff. I’m actually for some of this social change and most of the rest of it I couldn’t stop if I wanted it stopped. It’s going to happen with or without me and with or without the government. But as long as Democrats allow themselves to be identified with social changes that are unpopular at the moment they’ll lose elections they could otherwise win, elections being things that always happen in the moment.

And if one of those elections is for president next year, well, God help us all.