THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

In the af­ter­math of the elec­tion, shell-shocked Demo­crats struggled to pin­point a reas­on be­hind their stun­ning loss to Don­ald Trump. Hil­lary Clin­ton blamed FBI Dir­ect­or James Comey. Demo­crat­ic op­er­at­ives cri­ti­cized the Clin­ton cam­paign team for tak­ing the Rust Belt for gran­ted. Bernie Sanders and his as­cend­ant left-wing flank of the party blames the party's close­ness to Wall Street.

No one is point­ing a fin­ger at the most glar­ing vul­ner­ab­il­ity--the party's cul­tur­al dis­con­nect from much of the coun­try. On is­sues ran­ging from the pres­id­ent's hes­it­ance to la­bel ter­ror­ism by its name to an un­will­ing­ness to cri­ti­cize ex­trem­ist ele­ments of protest groups like Black Lives Mat­ter to ex­ec­ut­ive or­ders man­dat­ing trans­gender bath­rooms, the ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fen­ded the sens­ib­il­it­ies of the Amer­ic­an pub­lic. Among lib­er­al-minded mil­len­ni­als, Pres­id­ent Obama's ac­tions were a sign that he was chart­ing "an arc of his­tory that bends to­wards justice." But to older, more-con­ser­vat­ive Amer­ic­ans, it was a sign that the ad­min­is­tra­tion's views were well out­side the Amer­ic­an main­stream.

Clin­ton tried to win over mod­er­ates by rais­ing red flags about Trump's for­eign policy and his ra­cially charged, miso­gyn­ist­ic rhet­or­ic. But she didn't have a Sis­ter Soul­jah mo­ment to cri­ti­cize the ex­cesses of the Left--as Bill Clin­ton fam­ously did dur­ing the 1992 cam­paign--for fear of ali­en­at­ing the Obama co­ali­tion. In fact, her line that "im­pli­cit [ra­cial] bi­as is a prob­lem for every­one" dur­ing the first de­bate was a mo­ment that couldn't have been more re­pel­lent to those white Rust Belt voters who deser­ted the Demo­crats this year.

As New York Times colum­nist Ross Douthat pres­ci­ently wrote in Septem­ber: "The new cul­tur­al or­tho­doxy is suf­fi­ciently stifling to leave many Amer­ic­ans look­ing to the vot­ing booth as a way to re­gister dis­sent." Op­pos­ing polit­ic­al cor­rect­ness was one con­sist­ent theme in Trump's very muddled cam­paign mes­sage.

Demo­crats will be spend­ing their time in the polit­ic­al wil­der­ness fig­ur­ing out how to re­build a shattered party. But early in­dic­a­tions sug­gest that party lead­ers are veer­ing even fur­ther to the left in­stead of mod­er­at­ing their rhet­or­ic. 

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