One of the guests on a Fox News show last night was long-time Democrat pollster Mark Penn.
And when the talk turned to how the Democrat Party is faring today, this was his comment:
“I’ve never seen anything like this in over 40 years of polling. The Democratic Party ratings have collapsed from a 47% favorable down to 29, 27 in some of these polls, and that’s an incredible loss of moderate, working-class voters.
“Those [are the] kinds of voters that the Democratic Party needs to win elections, and it’s being shrunk to a base of left-wing advocates like Bernie Sanders and AOC who were touring the country carrying the Democratic banner. That’s not helping.”
Regarding the precipitous drop in Democrat Party favorability? That’s hard to argue against. More than one poll is showing it, and the extent of voter loss is nothing short of dramatic.
But, you might say, “these things happen all the time to both parties and they always rebound”. And you’d be right. Except there is a huge difference here.
The difference is that, in most other instances, the rejection is because the party has moved too far to either the right or left, and its reaction – the basis for its regeneration – is to move back toward the center.
As Mr. Penn correctly points out, the Democrat Party’s reaction, at least so far, is to give over even more control to the party’s hard-left base – led by self-professed socialist Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who much of our media, ever intent on trying to protect Democrats, are suddenly touting as having significant leadership qualities).
Remember that old saying “If you’re digging yourself into a hole, the first thing you have to do is stop digging”?
Well, the Democrat Party has dug itself into a hole – a gargantuan hole – by (this is a partial list) morphing into the party of transgender boys competing in sports/using women’s locker rooms, sanctuary status for illegal aliens – including violent gang members – and defending an educational system that is making us the laughingstock of the world.
And their “answer” to this disastrous situation? Based on the elevation of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, it is to keep digging that hole deeper.
If this doesn’t change, and change very, very soon, the best Democrats are likely to do in the near future is take a serious pounding in the 2026 elections. And the worst is that it will cause Democrats to splinter into two parties, neither of which like each other, thus making Republicans dominant.
If you want a seriously functioning two-party system – as I do – hope along with me that, at some point, sanity starts to prevail over there.
