Two articles last week on RealClearPolitics nicely captured the dilemma facing the Democratic Party.
One, by Griff Witte and Karia Adam, had the headline "After hard-left turn, Britain's Labor Party headed for historic defeat." The other, by Victor Davis Hanson, had the headline "Will 2020 be another 1972 for Dems?"
The juxtaposition, however unintentional, could be suggested to mean that the Democrats, having learned the wrong lessons from a shocking electoral defeat, are intent upon following Britain's Labor Party into political oblivion.
Political parties can respond to crushing defeats in either of two ways: by dispassionate assessment of the reasons for those defeats, usually with ensuing revision of positions and nature of appeals, or through emotional catharsis, usually with a lurch toward the ideological fringe and a purge of moderates in a search of ideological purity.
Parties that adopt the first course survive through adaptation, including an effort to attract new voting blocs, or at least reconnect with lost ones (in this case, for Democrats, working-class voters in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). Parties that adopt the second approach die as their ideological extremism alienates moderates and their base dwindles to a lonely band of true believers.
It has become increasingly obvious since the morning of Nov. 9, 2016, that the Democrats, with their furious "resistance" and obstructionism purely for the sake of obstructionism, have embraced this disastrous second course, latest evidence for which being their inter-party imbroglio over abortion.
Abortion has become the totemic issue for a radicalized Democratic leadership and a position regarding it--abortion on demand at taxpayer expense without restriction--is now being demanded of all party members, despite being shared by only a tiny minority of the country's voters.
The kerfuffle was initiated when erstwhile leftist darlings Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi made the mistake of deviating from orthodoxy and endorsing a (somewhat) pro-life Democratic candidate for mayor of Omaha, Neb., Heath Mello. After a furious backlash from the party's pro-choice interest groups, DNC Chair Tom Perez declared that all Democrats must henceforth fully embrace the abortion on demand at taxpayer expense without restriction position enshrined in the party platform. For Perez, this applied to "every candidate who runs as a Democrat" and was "not negotiable."
The startling thing about the new absolutism of Democrats on abortion is, of course, its ideological exclusionism--the American public is, and long has been, deeply divided over abortion, Democrats included.
A Pew survey from last year indicated that more than a quarter of Democrats (28 percent) thought abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. A more recent Marist poll found that more than a third (34 percent) believed abortion should be illegal with few exceptions, with another 24 percent supporting its legality only in the first three months of pregnancy.
As columnist Ramesh Ponnuru put it when summarizing such poll results, "That's a majority of Democratic voters with views to the right of the ones that have gotten Mello into trouble."
How peculiar then, that the leadership of the Democratic Party is demanding that Democrats embrace in lockstep the most extreme possible position regarding a practice, abortion, which 47 percent of Americans in a recent Gallup poll saw as morally unacceptable.
But an unseemly enthusiasm for abortion hasn't become the only way in which the Democratic Party increasingly excludes what might now be the vast majority of Americans from its ranks. There is, apparently, no room in it any longer for anyone who questions any aspect of climate-change orthodoxy, expresses any concern over illegal immigration, or disagrees with any of the claims contained in the Black Lives Matter narrative of police racism and brutality.
As progressivism immerses itself ever more deeply in the toxic brew of political correctness and identity politics, it becomes a secular religion, and as it seeks to sanctify and cleanse it must invariably excommunicate heretics within its midst. Rather than attract new adherents to the faith, the Democrats are on a kamikaze mission to demonize, purge and ultimately alienate.
Hillary Clinton lost an election that everyone expected her to win for many reasons, but her "deplorables" comments stand out as the moment when the mask slipped and revealed what so many Democrats actually think of so many of their fellow citizens. The message being sent by Democrats--you must think exactly as we think on all issues or you are racist, sexist, and homophobic--isn't likely to produce more Democrats.
After writing off half of the electorate as morally unworthy of membership in their party, they are now busy culling their ranks of blasphemers.
Democrats with an interest in winning an election or two in coming years might be advised to explore why they have lost more than 1,000 offices nationwide since Barack Obama was elected president. And to perhaps ponder the results of a Washington Post poll from a few weeks back showing that Donald Trump, despite the troubling nature of his first 100 or so days as president, would still defeat Clinton by 43-40 percent.
But the party can't reform because its increasingly radicalized base won't let it.
The base of the Democratic Party is enraged and energized. And that is great news for Republicans.
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial on 05/08/2017