The New York Times published a story titled “Most Americans Say the Democratic Party Does Not Share Their Priorities” that notes:
Asked to identify the Democratic Party’s most important priorities, Americans most often listed abortion, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and climate change, according to a poll from The New York Times and Ipsos conducted from Jan. 2 to 10.
The issues that people cited as most important to them personally were the economy and inflation, health care and immigration, the poll found. The kinds of social causes that progressive activists have championed in recent years ranked much lower.
That was evident from the start of the DNC election, highlighted appropriately by an MSNBC host.
Notably, Kamala Harris is reportedly consulting with Hillary Clinton on how to address her defeat. It was a telling turn since Clinton seemed to blame everyone from James Comey, self-hating women, Russians, Bernie Sanders, and misogynists for her defeat. That comes after many of us noted that Harris was re-running the same Clinton campaign with identity politics at the forefront and refusing to answer questions on key issues.
It appears that Harris is not the only one relying on the Clinton handbook for spinning defeat with more identity politics. At the outset, MSNBC host (and Washington Post writer) Jonathan Capehart asked who “believes that racism and misogyny played a role in Vice President Harris’s defeat.”
Every single candidate declared that the election was indeed the result, at least in significant part, of “racism and misogyny.” That included Marianne Williamson, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, DNC Vice Chair Ken Martin, Wisconsin Democrat party Chair Ben Wikler, former Bernie Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir, former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Nate Snyder, and Newton, Massachusetts Democratic City Committee executive member Jason Paul.
Not one noted that Harris was an awful candidate who refused to do anything other than the most favorable, controlled interviews. Even James Carville (who predicted Harris would defeat Trump) had an increasingly rare moment of clarity after the election. Carville called for a moment of “honesty” and said “We ran a presidential election, if we were playing a Super Bowl, we started our 7th string quarterback. That’s what happened, okay?”He added that it would have helped to have a presidential candidate who could “actually complete a sentence.”
Even the outgoing DNC chair Jaime Harrison declared last week that it was a mistake to go with Harris and that they had a better chance just sticking with Joe Biden despite his obvious mental decline. That is brutal.
However, it went from bad to worse as critics lampooned the DNC as becoming a parody of itself from a singing pitch for Chair to an explanation of gender rules that left many perplexed.
The DNC then elected a chair in Ken Martin, the longtime leader of Minnesota’s far left Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, who demanded for Trump to be tried for treason after the Russian bounty controversy (which was contested by the Trump Administration).
They then added David Hogg, 24, as Vice Chair, a far left advocate who previously called on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be abolished and for the defunding of police. Hogg’s selection is particularly curious after an election where immigration proved a major issue favoring the GOP. Hogg has also called the NRA a “terrorist organization.” His reason for the NRA designation? January 6th: “The NRA needs to be designated a terrorist organization for the role their supporters played in staging an insurrectionist coup.”
The Democratic Party has become a ship of fools. I previously worked Democratic campaigns from Ted Kennedy to Mo Udall to many Illinois candidates. The party was truly a party of the middle class with centrist values, including support for free speech. It cannot seem to break from identity politics as its primary focus and reason for being. Worse yet, it is “reimagining” the 2024 election in a way to keep reality within a comfort zone.
Many of us want to see a stronger and more centrist Democratic party. Yet, there is an irresistible impulse to push the same button despite every indication that it is a really bad idea:
The irony is that MSNBC’s host led this effort by asking every candidate to attribute the loss in part to racism and misogyny. The ratings of MSNBC and CNN cratered after the election and Fox routinely exceeds both networks combined in audience figures, including the coveted 25-54 demographic. Yet, Jonathan Capehart wanted to start with a group homage of identity politics. When everyone replied robotically in the affirmative, Capehart replied “That’s good, you all passed.”
Indeed, they did, but that was hardly the test.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”