Well, the Democrat National Convention is finally underway.
Things didn't start out as smoothly as folks would like, I'm sure. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been banished from the proceedings and a major anti-Hillary protest was raging earlier today outside the Wells Fargo Center in Philly.
Only the most dishonest partisan hacks would deny that the Democrats today are in fact a far left-wing party pushing an openly socialist, identity-based agenda. I think the only ones now just noting it are the establishment journalists in the mainstream press. And even then, reporters still insist on calling radical leftist ideologues "liberals." It's pretty maddening.
In any case, the Wall Street Journal provides a pretty decent overview on the front page of the paper today.
See, "
Hillary Clinton to Take Command of a Changed Democratic Party":
When Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic nomination on Thursday, she will take command of a party that has little in common with the one she and her husband rode to the White House a quarter-century ago.
The party she will inherit is less white and more liberal. It is better educated and not as willing to compromise with Republicans. Many Democrats today aren’t convinced capitalism is the best economic model or that socialism is taboo.
Nor is the party entirely sold on its new leader. A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll this month showed 45% of registered Democrats and those who lean in that direction would have preferred a nominee not named Hillary Clinton.
“I’m in the hold-your-nose-and-vote-for-Hillary-Clinton camp,” said Jason Frerichs, a Democratic Party county chairman in southwestern Iowa.
Behind the party’s evolution are seismic shifts that have threatened to sweep aside the pro-business, centrist brand of politics the Clintons long embodied. Those same forces could make it tougher for Mrs. Clinton to govern from the center should she win in November.
Working-class white voters once loyal to the Democratic Party have gravitated to the Republicans over the past two decades, drawn by the GOP’s stance on guns, immigration and other social issues.
Amid the exodus, Democrats have moved left.
Only 30% of Democrats considered themselves liberal in 1994, the second year of Bill Clinton’s presidency. That figure had nearly doubled by 2014, according to a study by the Pew Research Center.
With minorities, 20-somethings and college-educated voters making up a bigger chunk of the party, some Democrats are questioning tenets that once seemed inviolate. Take capitalism. An Iowa poll early this year showed more than four-in-10 likely Democratic caucus-goers in a state with an outsize influence on the nomination battle described themselves as socialist.
Watching these trends, some Democrats are uneasy. They fear the party will continue to lose state and local contests unless it makes an ideological course correction. For all of President Barack Obama’s electoral success, the party lost more than 80 House and Senate seats under his watch.
“The party has moved steadily left because of the surge of liberal populism, and that has caused the party to be in complete free fall at the subpresidential level,” said Jonathan Cowan, president of the centrist Democratic think tank, Third Way.
“The party is going to have to realize that to get and hold a sustained majority and enact solutions that are even remotely politically feasible, it’s going to have to move toward the center,” he said.
The draft party platform that Democrats approved at a two-day meeting in Orlando, Fla., highlights the sharp left turn the party has taken since Mr. Clinton held the White House 20 years ago.
The 1996 Democratic platform celebrated free-trade deals; the proposed new platform says they don’t “live up to the hype.” Bill Clinton’s platform embraced the death penalty; the new one would do away with it. The old platform boasted of building new prison cells; the 2016 version calls for “ending the era of mass incarceration.”
Eyeing the changes over the last generation, Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who conducts the Journal survey with Democrat Fred Yang, said: “These are two radically different parties.”
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign declined to comment.
She has signaled she isn’t about to govern in accordance with her party’s liberal faction. In naming a running mate, she passed over both Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts for the more moderate Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
Speaking to Charlie Rose of CBS News recently, she said: “We are the center-left party.”
Yet, pressed by Mr. Sanders during the presidential primaries, Mrs. Clinton reversed course and came out against a 12-nation Pacific trade deal she promoted back when she was secretary of state. Hoping to win over his young supporters, she recently rolled out new plans to wipe out public-college tuition for millions of families.
When Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic nomination on Thursday, she will take command of a party that has little in common with the one she and her husband rode to the White House a quarter-century ago.
The party she will inherit is less white and more liberal. It is better educated and not as willing to compromise with Republicans. Many Democrats today aren’t convinced capitalism is the best economic model or that socialism is taboo.
Nor is the party entirely sold on its new leader. A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll this month showed 45% of registered Democrats and those who lean in that direction would have preferred a nominee not named Hillary Clinton.
“I’m in the hold-your-nose-and-vote-for-Hillary-Clinton camp,” said Jason Frerichs, a Democratic Party county chairman in southwestern Iowa.
Behind the party’s evolution are seismic shifts that have threatened to sweep aside the pro-business, centrist brand of politics the Clintons long embodied. Those same forces could make it tougher for Mrs. Clinton to govern from the center should she win in November.
Working-class white voters once loyal to the Democratic Party have gravitated to the Republicans over the past two decades, drawn by the GOP’s stance on guns, immigration and other social issues.
Amid the exodus, Democrats have moved left.
Only 30% of Democrats considered themselves liberal in 1994, the second year of Bill Clinton’s presidency. That figure had nearly doubled by 2014, according to a study by the Pew Research Center.
With minorities, 20-somethings and college-educated voters making up a bigger chunk of the party, some Democrats are questioning tenets that once seemed inviolate. Take capitalism. An Iowa poll early this year showed more than four-in-10 likely Democratic caucus-goers in a state with an outsize influence on the nomination battle described themselves as socialist.
Watching these trends, some Democrats are uneasy. They fear the party will continue to lose state and local contests unless it makes an ideological course correction. For all of President Barack Obama’s electoral success, the party lost more than 80 House and Senate seats under his watch.
“The party has moved steadily left because of the surge of liberal populism, and that has caused the party to be in complete free fall at the subpresidential level,” said Jonathan Cowan, president of the centrist Democratic think tank, Third Way.
“The party is going to have to realize that to get and hold a sustained majority and enact solutions that are even remotely politically feasible, it’s going to have to move toward the center,” he said.
The draft party platform that Democrats approved at a two-day meeting in Orlando, Fla., highlights the sharp left turn the party has taken since Mr. Clinton held the White House 20 years ago.
The 1996 Democratic platform celebrated free-trade deals; the proposed new platform says they don’t “live up to the hype.” Bill Clinton’s platform embraced the death penalty; the new one would do away with it. The old platform boasted of building new prison cells; the 2016 version calls for “ending the era of mass incarceration.”
Eyeing the changes over the last generation, Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who conducts the Journal survey with Democrat Fred Yang, said: “These are two radically different parties.”
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign declined to comment.
She has signaled she isn’t about to govern in accordance with her party’s liberal faction. In naming a running mate, she passed over both Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts for the more moderate Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
Speaking to Charlie Rose of CBS News recently, she said: “We are the center-left party.”
Yet, pressed by Mr. Sanders during the presidential primaries, Mrs. Clinton reversed course and came out against a 12-nation Pacific trade deal she promoted back when she was secretary of state. Hoping to win over his young supporters, she recently rolled out new plans to wipe out public-college tuition for millions of families...
Still
more.
