The Democrat Party is going through something of a transformation process, and I’m not sure it’s for the better.
The era of Donald Trump hit the Democrats with so many rights that they begged for a radical left, and the latest Democrat candidates are only too eager to give it exactly what it wants.
As my RedState colleague Rusty Weiss reported, Democrat candidates are having something like a woke-off with each would-be politician competing for the gold medal in the Victimhood Olympics:
Craig is running to be "the first lesbian mom ever elected" to the U.S. Senate. (You see, Senator Laphonza Butler was the first lesbian mom appointed to the Senate.)
Flanagan, meanwhile, has boasted to anyone that will listen how she “was the first Native American woman to chair a national party committee in history.”
[...]
Not to be outdone, Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health professor, is separating himself from the pack in Michigan’s messy three-way primary by bragging about becoming “the first and only Arab and Muslim voice in the entire US Senate ever.”
Over in New Hampshire, there is a two-way race taking place, with Democrat Rep. Chris Pappas (NH-1) defending his left flank and running on being… gay.
Pappas asked the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund to support his campaign to help “make history” and send the first “out-gay man” to the U.S. Senate. He followed that up with a recent cringe AI-generated TikTok video suggesting his is an inspiring journey since he never could have imagined running for the U.S. Senate after “growing up gay in New Hampshire."
This is a pretty hilarious sight when you pull back and watch the party as a whole. It's my theory that the victories in the recent elections that saw Democrats win in blue areas gave them the idea that radicalism is the path to victory, and now you have Democrats standing up to declare they're more in a niche sector of victimhood than anyone else.
Their qualifications aren't that they have great ideas for governance; it's that they'll be the most novel vote because they're the first X, the most Y, and the loudest Z. The more oppressed you are, the more pure you become in the eyes of the radical left. You're to be voted for based on your relation to a token identity, not your competence.
But if I'm being honest, this doesn't look like confidence in identity politics, so much as it's panic being pushed away by radical belief. In the real world, the Democrat Party's union power is on the decline, black and Hispanic votes are bleeding slowly, the working-class is more Republican than it's been in a long time, and suburban moderates — the ones that once voted for Obama — are leaning toward Trump and his new Republican Party.
More than that, the Democrat Party is entirely leaderless. These purity tests are a sad flailing in the dark for a direction. They have no one to rally around, so they're rallying around an idea that they think will bear fruit. Sure enough, it did in places like New York City... but that's New York City. They'd go back to the old Democrat Party, but they're literally old and on their way out. Besides, they hate the old Democrat leaders now. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi both fell out of favor a while ago. Barack Obama's become a borderline joke. I wouldn't be surprised to hear a young Gen Z voter ask, "Who is Hillary Clinton?"
The Democrat Party is searching for an identity, and it thinks it will find one somewhere in the radicalism that it's fostered and grown over the past decade. Maybe they're right. They may very well find that this is an openly socialist policy that's literally America last, Somalia/Mexico/Gaza/etc. first.
And if that's the case, then by all means. Have this grand litmus test. Let Republicans be the party of the Americans and America First, as Democrats purity spiral themselves into irrelevance.
