The world’s oldest political party has developed an aversion to discretion. The Democratic Party is manacled to an overcaffeinated base that believes that deft government can deliver parity of status to everyone while micromanaging the economy’s health-care sector, which is larger than all but three foreign nations’ economies. Inconveniently, the party must appeal to voters who, living in dread of their next interaction with the department of motor vehicles, yearn only for governmental adequacy.

Which is why John Delaney, who is ending a three-term tenure as a Democratic congressman from Maryland, is seeking his party’s presidential nomination. His quest will test whether Democrats’ detestation of President Trump is stronger than their enthusiasm for identity politics: A white male businessperson, Delaney comes to bat with three strikes against him.

Suppose, however, Democrats are more interested in scrubbing the current presidential stain from public life than they are in virtue-signaling and colonizing the far shores of leftwingery. Delaney is much more than an example of the If-Trump-Can-Be-Elected-So-Can-My-Cocker-Spaniel response to 2016.