Moments of clarity are not often found anywhere in the pages of The New York Times. There are days when it feels as if even the "Cooking" section has been politicized. As regular readers of mine are aware, I begin my perusal of the media each work day by reading the Opinion sections of both the Times and The Washington Post. Those have always been hotbeds of egregious leftist bias, but have turned into veritable minefields of Trump Derangement Syndrome crazy in the past year. With one or two exceptions (Jim Geraghty writes for WaPo, for example), the Opinion writers at both organizations are not watching the same presidency that you and I are watching.
Imagine my surprise on Tuesday morning when I came across a Times Op-Ed titled, "Why Are So Many Democratic Politicians So Far Out of Touch?" An even bigger shock was that it was written by Thomas B. Edsall, a wordy, biased leftist apologist of the first order. In late 2023 or early 2024, I briefly wrote a recurring column called the "Trump Derangement Syndrome Meltdown of the Week." Edsall was the subject of the very first one of those and made a couple more appearances later.
My money would never have been on Edsall to wonder aloud if the Dems have gotten a little too out there. I'll just focus on two paragraphs from Edsall's article:
Why don’t more Democrats explicitly moderate their stands on transgender rights, immigration and other issues? Those who maintain far-out positions are well to the left of the electorate and its emblematic median voter. The trans issue clearly weakened Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, leaving her open to devastating pro-Trump ads.
In the case of one of the most disputed rights claimed by some parts of the transgender activist community — transgender women’s participation on women’s sports teams — Democrats have clear liberal grounds to challenge that claim, by asserting that they are protecting a woman’s right from unfair competition.
The question that kicks off the first paragraph is easy to answer. Democrats have been elevating and idolizing their bluest blue state politicians for several years now: New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, California's Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom, Minnesota's Tim Walz, and JB Pritzker from Illinois. These people are all products of states and political machines that long ago plunged off of the radical far-left cliff. They are completely unaware that they are "well to the left of the electorate" and would think that the "emblematic median voter" was a visitor from another planet.
Edsall fails to note the role that the news organization he writes for has played in this unyielding radical shift by prominent Democrats. The New York Times has probably done more to normalize the Democrats' far-left fringe than any other organization in media. The above-mention politicians use up all of the media oxygen in any room that they're in, especially AOC.
The second paragraph brings up a point I've been writing about for a while, which is that allowing biological males to compete in women's sports is a complete abandonment of young women who the Democrats claim to want to empower. Instead of, as Edsall mentions, trying to protect female athletes' rights, the Dems have gone all-in on kowtowing to a group that's a fringe of a fringe.
Relevant: After Not Shutting Up for 50 Years, Feminists Go Mute About Trans 'Females' in Women's Sports
The way the Democrats are manifesting their opposition to everything that the agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) do isn't moving the party any closer to the center. They could be making policy suggestions and engaging in some principled opposition but they're out there telling people that ICE agents are going to murder them in airports.
Near the end of the article, Edsall mentions the fundraising power of many of the progressives, which is demonstrably true. However, that money isn't buying them victories quite like they'd like it to, as we have seen in recent weeks.
The rise of the noisy progressives in the Democratic Party has pulled the old guard establishment types more to the left than they're admitting to themselves. They're so far out there that they couldn't find the political center with GPS and a team of Sherpa guides.
If anyone at the Democratic National Committee begins to worry about the problems associated with the ultra-progressive positions, Gavin Newsom will almost certainly be the first one thrown under the bus. The point that many of us on the right have been making about Newsom is that California's brand of leftism isn't always appealing outside of California. California is also an ideological bubble, which is why Newsom still thinks he's killing it out there. Even if he wanted to give a head-fake to 2028 primary voters and try to run as a more moderate candidate, he wouldn't be able to because he's been in a far-left echo chamber for too long. He hasn't the slightest clue what a moderate looks or sounds like.
Even if some Democratic candidates soften their positions on trans issues, I can't see them moderating any views on immigration after a year of demonizing ICE. They got way out over their skis when they committed to that route and, as I just wrote in Tuesday's Morning Briefing, I think it's a vulnerability for them going into the midterms.
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