The Two Competing Democratic Parties

By Noah Rothman

Friday, January 31, 2025

 

In the wake of Donald Trump’s reelection, a consensus emerged within Democratic ranks that blamed the party’s bad odor on “the groups.”

  

The “variety of activists and special interests” who “falsely” present themselves as representatives of distinct “communities” had managed to hijack the party and convince its representatives that their boutique political programs were electoral winners, the blogger Noah Smith opined. The revolving door that shuttles activists from government to the “nonprofit complex in the Democratic Party” and back to government, Ezra Klein observed, ensured that engineering a divorce between the activist class and the establishmentarian Democratic Party wouldn’t be so easy.

 

Anyone who watched the leading candidates to helm the Democratic National Committee debate one another at a Thursday-night forum must acknowledge Klein’s prescience.

 

Semafor’s David Weigel took one for the team in chronicling the bizarre goings-on that occurred on George Washington University’s debate stage. There, the audience was treated to a game of one-upmanship in which each candidate appealed to progressives with increasingly scene-chewing efforts to flatter the pretensions of “the groups.”

 

Candidates accused the Democratic Party of failing to meet it social obligations because there “has never been a Native American in leadership at the DNC.” They assured themselves that, in the absence of a “misinformation, disinformation war room,” the party would not pull itself out of the wilderness. All save one candidate for DNC chair committed themselves to increasing the number of at-large seats available to delegates who identify as “trans.” When the forum’s moderator, Washington Post opinion writer Jonathan Capehart, asked the panel whether they “believe that racism and misogyny played a role in VP Harris’s defeat,” all hands shot up. “You all passed,” Capehart insisted.

 

Although the candidates congratulated themselves on the concessions the Democratic Party had made to the pressure groups, the targets of their attempts at appeasement were not placated.

 

If this DNC leadership forum is any indication, Democratic institutionalists are busily talking themselves out of the convictions that a plurality of voters imposed on them on November 5. The party is paralyzed by the extortion racket to which they consigned themselves — a racketeering scheme in which students, minority activists, and radical progressive advocacy organizations are granted the power to the scuttle political initiatives and candidacies that buck their demands. Between that and their adoption of the ponderous linguistic shibboleths the activist class insists on as the price of admission into their social circles, the Democratic Party’s institutional leadership is trapped in a cycle of self-destruction.

 

And yet, while the Democratic Party is forlorn, it is not forsaken. There are models to which its members might appeal if they were inclined to regain the fluency they once had when appealing to Americans outside the impermeable progressive panic room. Pennsylvania’s statewide elected officials have given the party a simple road map to follow.

 

Take, for example, Governor Josh Shapiro:

Now, how easy was that? With seemingly zero regard for the emotional state of some of the country’s most wild-eyed animal-rights activists, Shapiro blithely told an outfit taking aim at one of his state’s (admittedly odd) but beloved traditions to go jump in a lake. He will experience precisely no political consequences as a result of this display of heterodoxy. Indeed, Shapiro might enjoy a few benefits. That was, after all, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman’s experience.

 

From the outset of the October 7 massacre that inspired a campaign of harassment, vandalism, and violence on America’s campuses and in its streets, Fetterman displayed nothing but contempt for those who maintained that the Jews brought their torment on themselves. He was utterly deaf to their appeals — a deafness that contrasted with much of his party’s response to the violence. Consumed with the sense that alienating pro-Hamas activists would cost them at the ballot box, Democrats turned a blind eye to the madness (Biden only acknowledge the phenomenon’s existence six months into it — which is to say, too late).

 

Pennsylvania’s senior senator blasted the demonstrators and the “groups” financing and supporting their misanthropy, and he was wildly rewarded for it. Back home, Fetterman enjoys the approval of 48 percent of voters in his state (with 37 percent disapproving), and we’re not just talking about Democrats and independents. Nearly 30 percent of Pennsylvania Republicans say they have a favorable view of Fetterman’s performance in office. Shapiro, too, occupies a position of strength. “An Emerson College/The Hill survey released in July showed Shapiro with a 49 percent approval rating in the state,” The Hill reported in November, “while a Franklin & Marshall poll released in April showed him with a 54 percent approval rating.”

 

In arguably the most electorally important swing state in the country — a commonwealth with a cross section of voters that reflects the nation as a whole — these Democrats are sitting pretty while the rest of the party struggles to adapt. Given the ease with which Democrats could adopt the Pennsylvania model, though, we must conclude that the struggle is self-imposed. If Pennsylvania’s voters are any indication, the country is prepared to reward those Democrats who have the courage to tell the activist class where they can go. The off-ramp is clear. It’s a wonder that more Democrats don’t just take it.