I can't help but feel like Democrats have backed themselves into a very tight corner here. It's been a long process, too. The social justice movement that kicked off decades ago might've been a huge boon to the Democrat Party at times, especially around the Obama era, but the monster has grown too fat and strong, and it is now eating the Democrat Party.
As my colleague Ward Clark noted in his piece on Monday, the "No Kings" protest that the left was so proud of ended up backfiring, as now the Democrat Party has to contend with a worked-up base expecting big wins thanks to the rally:
Grassroots Democrats frustrated with the Trump administration have been demanding a fight, and on Saturday millions showed up at “No Kings” demonstrations across the country to protest the president’s government.
In that context, Democrats know they will get hit hard by a number of voices on the left if they do not get something for opening the government.
“People are going to get hammered” if they vote for the House-passed bill to reopen the government and keep it funded through Nov. 21, said one Democratic senator who requested anonymity to talk candidly about their party.
As I wrote yesterday, the purpose of the "No Kings" protest was never about Trump, or even preventing an authoritarian takeover. The left is completely fine with authoritarianism if it's theirs. No, the point of the "No Kings" protest was to rally the base and project strength and support for the Democrat Party. That's really all it boils down to.
Read: The 'No Kings' Rally Was Never About Monarchs - or Even Donald Trump
But what Ward reported on is true. The "No Kings" protest is going to develop some expectations for the Left. What happens when the Democrat Party can't meet them?
The issue that the Democrat Party has had for some time now is that it's fractured between two sides that both love and hate each other. The more radical side is one that the Democrat Party created to excite the base, give itself moral authority, and win elections. Repeated promises of end-times results if Republicans win anything made for a base that is, for lack of a better term, unthinking and rabid.
Radicalism comes with expectations, and the Democrat Party does not have the means, or even the will, to meet a lot of them, and with the gap between the Democrat Party and its radicals getting ever-wider, it's unclear how they're going to remain a cohesive party. In honesty, I see an internal Democrat civil war brewing, especially if they can't score any wins during the midterm elections.
From where I'm sitting, the only way the Democrat Party scores any wins is by becoming more moderate. Not sounding moderate, mind you. I mean, actually adopting positions that would have been considered common sense to the party not 20 years ago. Of course, this would mean a complete and total abandonment of the radicals, which would cause strife anyway.
However, the radicals are not going to benefit the party in any way. They continue to shove moderate voices out the door and weaken the ground support of the party in the process. They make for good foot soldiers. They enthusiastically carry signs and march in the streets, but outside that display of strength and solidarity, there is no real substance. The Democrat Party needs moderate voters to win, and the radicals aren't exactly inspiring anyone to tag along.
But the Democrats can't stop appealing to these radicals because, at least at this time, they have no one else. They fed the monster too much, and it created a host of problems that the Democrats just don't have the ability to overcome. They pushed too far into the LGBTQ+ agenda, and now parents are turned off to the Democrat Party for the sake of their children in large numbers. They used government funding for selfish reasons, and now, with their spending exposed, they can't rely on that money to assist them. They leaned too far into their own "compassion" with illegal aliens, and now the people have turned against them on even that, with Trump's approval on immigration higher than any Democrat ever thought it would be.
They continued to take the 20 on every 80/20 issue under the sun in order to spite Donald Trump and the Republicans, and feed the radicals, and now they're having to come up with a way to garner wins from a weak position made only weaker because they appealed to a very small group of people they're ultimately afraid of, rather than Americans.
But that's what they get for the division, fearmongering, and bigotry they practiced every day. Social justice, as the left sees it, was never a sustainable position to run on in the long term. It might get you a strong showing in an environment where news sources are gatekept, but as avenues of information continue to open up that lay outside the Democrat Party's control, that ability to spin narratives diminishes, and reality sets in.
They wanted radicals to help sell themselves, and they got them. Now these radicals are the very thing keeping voters at bay... ya know, besides their own incompetence.
