This experiment has derailed. It’s not similar in any way since Republicans aren’t this crazy concerning political correctness, but there was a dominant wing of the party that simply had to be told to get to the back of the bus around 2016. The neoconservative project derailed post-Iraq War. Americans were not going to keep a GOP majority in Congress over national security fears. They were tired of endless wars. They were not patient over this nation-building nonsense. They saw the bill we paid, what we got, and we’re not pleased.
With Democrats, their ascendant ‘woke’ wing is more of an issue on the domestic front. With political correctness, speech codes, proper pronoun nonsense, and critical race theory being jammed down our throats, Democrats are quietly admitting this lurch to the Left on anything cultural is going to cost them a ton of votes. It could be potentially catastrophic for the 2022 midterms. To put it bluntly, there are some on the Left who know that if the party continues to go ‘woke’ and it’ll go broke in every sense of the word concerning political capital.
The silver lining is that there are sensible liberals that still exist and know how they come off to most voters: condescending, self-righteous, and insufferable. As a progressive, you can make yourself miserable nonstop. This is America, but don’t think for a second that makes for a popular agenda. Political correctness-induced misery is the drug of choice for normal people (via Axios):
A growing number of Democrats are ringing the alarm that their party sounds — and acts — too judgmental, too sensitive, too "woke" to large swaths of America.
Why it matters: These Democrats warn that by jamming politically correct terms or new norms down the throats of voters, they risk exacerbating the cultural wars — and inadvertently helping Trumpian candidates.
Top Democrats confide that they're very aware of the danger. Already, we've seen a widespread pullback in the "defund the police" rhetoric.
[…]
Democratic strategist James Carville has been warning his party about this for months, telling Vox in an April interview:
"You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? ... This is not how voters talk."
[…]
What we're hearing: Moderate and swing-district lawmakers and aides tell Axios' Margaret Talev and Alayna Treene that the party could suffer massive losses in next year's midterms if Democrats run like Sen. Elizabeth Warren is president.
One former Senate aide said it's "bye-bye majority" if Democrats run on "extreme wokeness."
Yes, indeed. In fact, ‘defund the police’ is what spurred scores of black and Hispanic voters to vote Republican in 2020. Most voters aren’t liberal and don’t view every issue along the lines of an academic exercise like college-educated whites who have the luxury. These are some of the most ideological people in the country, whereas most nonwhite voters do not view everything through this prism. Yet, white liberals are the ones who are swelling the ranks of the Democratic Party and are starting to control more of the messaging and agenda-setting. David Shor, a liberal data scientist, has noted that white liberals want a liberal vs conservative dichotomy in elections. Bad idea since Shor knows liberals would lose—big. Also, white liberals are known to put feelings in front of facts when it comes to voter narratives. Hispanics are not all that liberal on the issue of immigration, but white liberals think so, hence their incessant push for open borders policy. Kevin Drum, a liberal blogger, noted that for years it was the hypothesis that GOP could do well with Latino voters if they just moderated a bit. Instead, Democrats got so nuts, it’s pushing them into the GOP by default. Electoral disaster could be on the horizon for the Left. I hope so.