The Democratic Party is lost. For eight long years, they made Donald Trump the bane of all existence, and despite the best efforts of the party, news media, intelligence services, Hollywood, and the activists, he’s back — and more powerful than ever. Worse, they don’t know the way out, but in all their infighting, three proposals are taking shape among the factions: The progressives, the pragmatists, and the possums.
The progressives are the most obvious. Like vegans and atheists, their politics are the first thing they’ll tell you about. These Democrats counsel no retreat from the politics that got them so lost in the first place. “Democrats have been playing dead for too many years,” progressive icon Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) claimed last weekend.
The cause is their religion, and you should never underestimate a cult.
The progressives blame Joe Biden for their defeat and truly believe that if they’d just been better able to communicate, Americans would have agreed they hold the answers.
True transgenderism hasn’t been tried … you know. That sort of thing.
Their old guard is visible, from Sanders to that old man in the ponytail waving his cane and mumbling old gospel songs. Plenty of professional Democrats are embarrassed by them (and, in the primaries last year, even took a few of the louder, less intelligent ones out). Still, they have a strong network of support among activists and (now-devastated) nonprofits. More, they maintain a revolutionary spirit. The cause is their religion, and you should never underestimate a cult.
Progressives have a problem: They lack credible champions who can stick to their principles and be seen as serious presidential contenders. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) might be a rare exception. The blue-state Democrat has become one of the most consistent and vocal critics of the Trump administration. Unlike many of his colleagues, who limit their opposition to procedural battles, Murphy challenges Republicans directly on substantive issues like transgender rights and foreign aid.
Then there are the pragmatists (or the pretend pragmatists). These men and women are in strategic retreat, pulling back from the most radical Democrat planks (with the smallest constituencies) while trying to maintain those deemed too important (or too sacred) to abandon.
These Democrats
include many state governors but are most noticeably captured by California’s Gavin Newsom. Long a champion of hard-left causes, Newsom read the polls, sensed the shifting winds, and began stepping back from his most progressive positions over the past year. Last week, Newsom sparked fury among progressives when he conceded to conservative activist Charlie Kirk that men dominating women in sports is “deeply unfair” and admitted that Trump’s ads on the issue were “devastating” against former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Men playing in women’s sports is a perfect example of a narrow concession on a losing issue with a small constituency that used threats, intimidation, and money to masquerade as a mass cultural movement.
Even CNN admits this. Late last week, one poll by the outlet showed that 94% of Republicans, 67% of Democrats, and 64% of independents agree with Newsom. “You rarely get 79% of the country to agree on anything,” data reporter Harry Enten
said, “but they do, in fact, agree on the idea of opposing transgender female athletes in women’s sports.”
Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg also fits in this lane. After Trump’s inauguration, he infamously removed his pronouns from his X bio, and in February he even criticized his own party’s devotion to woke politics as a “Portlandia” skit. (Remember: This is the same guy who called highways “racist.”)
The reason for these sudden changes of heart is obvious:
national ambition. Progressives are absolutely furious about it, and this makes sense; little inspires the hate of the faithful like an apostate.
On the other side of this lane are those potential party leaders less tarred by the political excesses of the Democrats’ decade-long moral crusade, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
Like most “centrist Democrats,” Shapiro enjoys the reputation less by his own moderation and more by how far his allies have gone to the left. Winning a swing-state lost by two of the past three Democratic presidential candidates carries a lot of weight in Democratic circles, however, and anyone guessing the future of the Democratic Party has eyes on his and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman’s brand of swing-state liberalism.
For his part, Beshear gained attention for winning in a full-blown red state, but it comes with a couple of caveats. First: Family name. “Beshear” draws a lot of water in the Bluegrass State; it’s unlikely that any other Democrat would have won there (even with the same policies). More: You might not hear much from him because while he looks good on paper, he’s not a very inspiring politician.
While they’re less progressive than many of their peers, Shapiro and Beshear have also largely pursued the third path for Democrats: playing possum. This strategy was first articulated by former President Bill Clinton strategist James Carville, much to the rage of Sanders and Co., but it doesn’t have to mean surrender (as the progressives claim it does).
Knowing when to stay silent might better describe this third path. A good example is House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who called for quiet decorum ahead of the president’s address to Congress last week. While he made Democrats’ positions known, he has shied away from the spotlight in early skirmishes with the administration.
Thus far, however, Jeffries has shown little ability to restrain the progressives. Their antics during Trump’s address to Congress and their civil rights cosplay might as well be the face of the party, as far as casual observers are concerned.
Laying low is obviously not a path out of the woods, but it might be a pretty good temporary strategy. First, the American people just thoroughly rejected Harris’ progressive record, and Democrats don’t have nearly the megaphone they did during the presidential campaign, so how will more street theater help? Second, the White House is at the peak of its power, but Republicans are famous for tripping over themselves. The time for political comebacks is never ripe right after a major defeat.
The progressives don’t like that one bit. Indeed, another aspect that ties Team Pragmatic and Team Possum together is Team Progressive’s disdain for them both.
Progressives are outnumbered among the front-runners for the next presidential race, but don’t count them out. Like I said,
never underestimate a cult.
KTLA 5: ‘Disturbing,’ ‘disappointed’: LGBTQ+ advocates react to Newsom’s shift on trans athletes
Advocate: How Chris Murphy is changing the Democratic Party and holding Republicans to account
The Spectator: Democrats’ Trump derangement syndrome comes home to roost
Blaze News: LGBT groups uneasy over Disney’s first Christian prayer since 1996
New York Times: ActBlue, the Democratic Fund-Raising Powerhouse, Faces Internal Chaos
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