Democrats Can Become the Party of Insurgency Again

There have been repeated clashes between the left and the center of the Democratic Party over the past 50-plus years, especially in the presidential nomination contests of 1968, 1972, 1984, 1992, 2016 and 2020. The post-election debate is now in full flower, with left-wing and centrist Democrats blaming each other for the loss.

The selection of Kamala Harris, a woman of Black and South Asian ancestry as the nominee, may have accentuated the perception of the Democratic Party as more progressive on race and gender and made some voters feel alienated or concerned about the direction of the party.

As my Times colleagues Erica L. Green and Maya King wrote on Nov. 7, in “For Black Women, America Has Revealed to Us Her True Self,”

The ascendance within the Democratic Party of well-educated whites holding very liberal views has in fact pushed the party to the left of the mainstream. This intraparty ideological shift raises another question looking toward 2026 and 2028: Have the forces supporting unpopular progressive policies in the general electorate become strong enough to successfully push back against the calls coming from Democratic pragmatists for centrist retrenchment on such issues as immigration, policing and the promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion?

In a Nov. 15 article, “Trump Broke the Democrats’ Thermostat,” John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times writes:

The shift to the left was most pronounced among those who identify themselves as “strong Democrats,” those who dominate the activist and agenda-setting wing of the party. Burn-Murdoch cited General Social Survey data to show that this segment of the Democratic electorate reacted most intensely to the election of Donald Trump, which was manifested in their shift on such issues as affirmative action and immigration.

In the case of immigration, for example, strong Democrats were close to the median voter in 2008, supporting cuts in the level of immigration by 20 points, according to Burn-Murdoch. But by 2020, strong Democratic voters had taken a giant step to the left, supporting increased immigration by 40 points, placing them far away from the median voter, whose views remained unchanged.

There are signs that the Democratic Party has not only adopted left orthodoxy on social and cultural issues but that it is also still not prepared to tolerate debate over these choices. This is reflected in the hostility expressed toward Democratic leaders who suggest moderating the party stance on transgender rights — a seemingly peripheral issue, as far as the country as a whole goes, that Trump and other Republicans used to portray Democrats as more concerned with special interests than the public interest.