Decoupling the Democratic Party from Progressive Activists Is Easier Said Than Done

By Noah Rothman

Friday, November 08, 2024

 

This week, Democratic congressman Seth Moulton did his level best to diagnose the conditions that led so many American voters to cast his party into the political wilderness. In the process, he revealed how difficult it will be to remedy them.

 

“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” the Massachusetts Democrat told the New York Times. What challenges, specifically? “I have two little girls,” he said, “I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

 

With these remarks, the left-wing hivemind that enforces the very code of silence Moulton condemned sprang into action.

 

As the Boston Globe reports, Democrats across Massachusetts, “including the mayor of Salem and the Salem School Committee,” raced to condemn Moulton’s remarks “in the strongest terms possible.”

 

In a joint email to families, the committee and Mayor Dominick Pangallo said Moulton’s comments “do not reflect our values” and that “neither fear nor political whim will shake our commitment to [students].”

 

“We want to reassure our LGBTQ+ students that we as district leaders will always celebrate your identities, support your dreams and aspirations, and applaud your accomplishments,” the email said.

 

The fracas is illustrative of the scale of the challenge before Democrats. It took a long time to erect the intellectually cloistered edifice that regards expressions of common sense like Moulton’s as threats to the safety of an impossibly small minority of Americans who believe their liberty is not secured unless it detracts from someone else’s.

 

This outlook is far less capable of attracting new adherents than it is of aggressively policing apostasy. Extirpating it from mainstream Democratic discourse will be a struggle. You might think that the Democratic Party’s instinct for political self-preservation would induce the resolve necessary to at least try to convey to the progressive activist class the extent to which it has become a political liability. But that class has become accustomed to getting its way, and intimidation is its weapon of first resort.

 

It is not at all clear which faction will emerge victorious from the coming contest. But there can be no doubt that a fight is coming.