I’ve said before that you know just how far to the left the Democratic Party has become when Joe Biden is considered the “moderate” or “centrist” candidate. Obviously you can’t win a Democratic primary as a true moderate or centrist, so it’s really a relative measure. But still, just how wackadoodle has the party come when supporting “fixing Obamacare” over Medicare for all makes you a centrist.
Pete Buttigieg is another candidate who is often given the “moderate” label. Make no mistake about it, neither of them or any other candidate running can legitimately be called centrists.
Matt Bennett, the co-founder of the left-wing think tank Third Way, spoke to Axios about this phenomenon. “The center in American politics shifts in every era,” he said. “The world changes, and so do our politics.”
Gallup found that Americans who identify as “liberal” has gone up significantly since the Clinton years. Increasing from 17% in 1992 to 26% in 2018, while those identifying as “moderate” have declined and those identifying as “conservative” has been relatively consistent.
This makes a lot of sense. Anecdotally speaking, I know many liberals who fancy themselves to be moderates. “I look at both sides,” they say. “I don’t care about party, I care about issues,” they reason. For whatever reason, they found ways to claim the mantle of moderate or centrist despite the fact they were at least as liberal as I was conservative.
But, Democrats are just being true to their liberal selves by embracing the liberal label. What qualified as a liberal position 30 years ago doesn’t exactly cut it anymore in today’s Democratic Party. Democrats have ditched the “safe, legal, and rare” mantra for abortion for “unlimited, unrestricted, and taxpayer-funded.” To make it in today’s Democratic Party, you can’t support parental notification laws, or physician-only laws, heartbeat bills, pre-abortion counseling, or mandatory ultrasounds. Democrats went from believing that abortion should be rare, to feminists trying to destigmatize abortion with marketing campaigns like “Shout Your Abortion.”
The Democratic Party has become so increasingly susceptible to radicalization on social issues that within an absurdly short period of time they embraced transgender ideology and are literally pushing for men to have the right to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms.
The Democratic Party is no better when it comes to economic issues. You’d be hard-pressed to find anything on their domestic agenda that doesn’t involve trying to get the government to pay for, if not run something. “Free” government-run healthcare, “free” college, “free” everything.
When it comes to foreign policy, Democrats have fully embraced the Blame America First mentality, and have often sided with America’s enemies–especially when a Republican is in charge of foreign policy. The Democrats’ reactions to the death of Iranian General Soleimani was shameful and disturbing. Imagine if Republicans had responded the same way to the death of Osama bin Laden.
Today’s Democratic Party doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism, and embraces open borders, abolishing I.C.E., and basically the invasion of America. They’ll lay down a red carpet for illegal immigrants, bribe them with taxpayer-fund benefits and drivers licenses in exchange for their support and
The Democratic Party has fallen far from its roots in order to embrace socialism. The platforms of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates were once reserved for fringe candidates in years past.
_____
Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
