November 16, 2016
THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:
Democrats Are Losing the Culture Wars : Party leaders are moving leftward, naively assuming they can win over working-class voters with a socialist-minded message. (Josh Kraushaar, 11/15/16, National Journal)
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.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 16, 2016 6:11 PM