Studies consistently reveal that the Democratic Party has lurched to the left since last century, whereas the Republican Party hasn’t moved much. The Democrats’ platform seems to consist of three things today: bashing Donald Trump, advocating for transitioning the gender of children, and promoting abortion — including all the way to 9 months of partial-birth abortion. Tellingly, Kamala Harris has no political positions listed on her website. With Robert Kennedy Jr.’s desertion of the Democratic Party last week fully endorsing Trump, moderate Democrats are being left behind.
Democrats lost the working class under Trump, and they also started losing Hispanics and blacks. A recent MSM poll found that black voters were less likely than other Democratic groups to view Trump as a threat. Young black men are fleeing the party in droves. Only 58 percent of black men now support the Democratic Party. And the party is even losing gay males now.
Due to the Democrats’ extreme shift to the left, the parties have become increasingly polarized, with the trend most noticeably occurring around 2000. While Republicans’ positions have stayed mostly the same on average, Democrats have hardened their support for their positions and adopted radical new positions.
Coinciding with the extreme move to the left has been the Democratic Party’s transformation into the party of women. Now, 60% of Democrats are women. The Democrats’ website identifies 16 demographic groups called “Who We Serve.” Even though men represent half the population, they are not listed.
A survey of Gen Z found that only 28% of college-educated women believe that the U.S. has made progress towards “giving women equal rights to men” over the past decade; instead, they think women have lost ground. Another survey found that 87% of young Democratic women believe women face discrimination in society.
Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, said the Democratic Party has deserted pro-life Democrats. “[W]e should not exploit women for political reasons,” she told the National Catholic Register.
Gay men have figured out that the Democratic Party, which treats people as monolithic groups instead of as individuals, has decided that they aren’t much different than white males and now pass them over for other groups in the LGBT+ movement, especially gender-transitioning minors and drag queens reading books to young children. The Log Cabin Republicans are growing at a fast pace, and in June, their president, Charles Moran, published an article in Townhall titled “Why Many Conservative Gays Rejected the Pride Flag This Pride Month.” Salon lamented that in 2020, only 50% of LGBT were Democrats, having mostly defected to independents (15% are Republicans).
The 1980 Democratic platform contained very little of the tenets Democrats promoted at their presidential convention last week. There was no mention of LGBTQ+. The platform extensively denounced drug use and drug trafficking. It promoted “the continuation of tax deductions for charitable gifts” in education, but today’s Democratic Party now strenuously opposes tax deductions for school choice. The old platform said, “The Democratic Party shall seek to eliminate sex-based discrimination and inequities,” but now the party only mentions women.
The 1980 platform called to “[s]implify the tax code” and said, “[n]ew tax reform efforts are needed to increase savings and investment.” An entire section titled “Government Openness and Integrity” was dedicated to promoting government openness and protecting whistleblowers. Instead of defunding the police, the platform said, “The Democratic Party is pledged to continuing its strong record of providing needed assistance to local law enforcement.”
The platform criticized Republicans on energy, saying, “Domestic production of oil and natural gas was steadily declining, with price controls discouraging exploration and production. … Our dependence on foreign oil was increasing every year.” The platform praised the increase in coal production. Regarding regulatory reform, the platform stated, “[W]e must continue to deregulate over-regulated industries and remove other unnecessary regulatory burdens on state and local governments and the private sector, particularly those which inhibit competition.”
Many moderate Democrats are becoming independents. Independents have surpassed the numbers of Democrats and Republicans in many states, and in some states like Arizona, surpass only Democrats since Republicans’ voter registration numbers continue to increase. Independents generally split about 50/50 between voting Republican versus Democrat. A 2015 Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy survey found that 14.6 percent of Arizona independents identify as conservatives, 12.1 percent as liberals, and 73.3 percent as moderates. An NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll from May found that 54% of independents intended to vote for Trump, while only 42% chose Biden.
A poll from Fox News conducted earlier this year found that 29% of independents supported Kennedy, compared to 24% for Trump and 25% for Joe Biden. A November New York Times/Siena poll found that Kennedy brought in 34% of under-30 voters. An
So, who are all these moderate Democrats going to vote for in the 2024 presidential election? Will they follow Kennedy’s lead and vote for Trump? Kennedy said he was suspending his presidential campaign because if he stayed in the race, he would take votes away from Trump, tipping the race to Harris.
Earlier this month, a poll for the Media Research Center found that 71% and 86% of Democrats and independents who voted for Biden in 2020 are unaware of Harris’ most controversial views on critical issues. If the Democrats can continue hiding her views, maybe they’ll have a shot.
However, even before Kennedy’s endorsement, longtime political pollster analyst Nate Silver, who ran the FiveThirtyEight site, gave Trump a 61.3% chance of winning the electoral college and Harris only a 38.1% chance. The only battleground state he said Harris was doing well in was Wisconsin. Everything points to moderate Democrats putting Trump over the top — much like they did for Ronald Reagan in 1980.
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