Yes, the press still habitually elevates Democrats and their ideas. And, yes, the press still habitually savages Republicans, who are treated reflexively as abnormal. But, as it has grown bolder and more ideological, the journalistic class has become just as willing to use the Democratic Party to spread its own ideas as to be used by the Democratic Party as the promulgators of its cause.

From this predicament, there is no obvious escape. Why did the entire Democratic Party pay for the stupidity of Defund the Police in 2020, even though only the fringes had fully endorsed it? Because the media loved the idea, so they tied it to the Democrats’ brand, cast the Republicans as the bad guys in the story, and pushed it as hard as they could. Why did Terry McAuliffe blow the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election? Because the press told him that parents loved being cut out of their kids’ educations and that those who didn’t were a troglodyte minority — and, fool that he is, McAuliffe believed them. Why is Chuck Schumer so baffled by Joe Manchin’s recalcitrance? You get the picture.

Competition keeps people sharp. Antagonism does, too. Without them, one is liable to become complacent, flabby, and dumb. The average elected Democrat now spends his days being agreed with on the Sunday shows, having his slogans and characterizations mindlessly repeated in the newspapers, and watching in false comfort as his most stupid ideas are taken seriously and his critics’ objections are labeled “controversial.” If he gets any pushback at all, it comes from the left, and it is rendered in a language that none of the voters who pose a threat to him is able to speak. The Democrats’ present plight is in part the product of bad timing and weak leadership at the top. And yet its general inability to cope with the bad hand that it has been dealt is being made immeasurably worse by the decades it has spent being mollycoddled by lunatics. As a result of its incestuous relationship with the press, the vast majority of elected Democrats have simply not been prepared for battle. The consequence: Calamity.