New York City, including its suburbs, has long been considered one of the bluest areas in America, even at a time when Donald Trump has been eating into some traditionally Democratic strongholds. As we have discussed here many times, however, there is a distinct difference between traditional liberalism and the new breed of woke progressivism. One analysis from the New York Post this weekend looked at signs that the tide may already be shifting back in the other direction. In the political arena, the message has begun to morph from "go woke, go broke" to "go woke, go home." A new class of moderate Democrats in the Empire State have been fighting to oust some of the wokest of the far left and they've been having an impact. The Squad has already taken some sharp hits, with Jamaal Bowman, Mondaire Jones, and Alessandra Biaggi being shown to the exits or already out of office. And there may be more to come.
Moderates have broke the “woke” in New York’s Democratic Party.
A left-leaning political revolution that swept over New York City’s sleepy northern suburbs in 2018 and 2020 has receded – with outspoken progressive politicians like “Squad” Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Mondaire Jones and Alessandra Biaggi swept out or no longer in office.
The liberal activism unleashed in reaction to Donald Trump’s 2016 election and presidency has taken a nosedive in four years – with the hard-left incumbents and candidates defeated and Democrats taking a hard swing toward the center in major races.
Some of the moderate New York Democrats who spoke to the Post were sounding more like Fox News hosts than supporters of the Squad. They described policies and positions such as defunding the police or opposing Israel as "extreme." They are obviously capable of reading the polls and they've seen their own voters moving rapidly away from such positions except for very small minorities. One Democratic consultant described Jamaal Bowman's recent losing race as "a message election." And the underlying message was clear.
The same analyst also sounded as if some members of his party have played the Trump card entirely wrong. He spoke of Democrats supporting the most extreme left-wing positions possible simply because they wanted to vote "as far away from Trump as humanly possible." Well, they certainly succeeded in that effort, but their own reliable voters have been rewarding them with a one-way ticket back home. It's not that all of those suburban Democratic voters have suddenly put on red MAGA hats. They simply don't want to be enveloped in the craziness of the far-left agenda and be forced to live with the societal damage it leads to.
The consultant quoted above also seemed to have undergone a different, but equally important moment of self-realization. He noted that if people in a given area are unhappy with the way things are going and the conditions they are facing in their own lives, you can't reasonably blame the Republicans when you live in a massively blue area where the Democratic primary is effectively the same as the general election. That's something we've been saying here for years, but it apparently took a few good floggings at the ballot box for the message to get through to some of the Democrats.
Will any of the members of this new generation of moderate Democrats be willing or able to reject some of the other extreme crazy policies that the far left has embraced and return to some semblance of sanity? A good place to start would probably be the left's obsession with the transgender agenda, particularly as it applies to medical "treatments" for children and men competing in women's sports or showing up in their bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers. These are deeply unpopular ideas, though you wouldn't guess that from the majority of the coverage we see in the legacy media. They might also try moderating their positions on abortion. I'm not saying they should get on board with total bans. (They're still Democrats, after all.) But they could recognize the reality that almost nobody supports third-trimester abortions unless the life of the mother or the baby is directly endangered. If these recent trends hold, they may wind up seeing how surprisingly well they will do in a primary challenge against any extreme left candidate.
