The Democrats know they really should be killing Republicans in the polls right now, except they aren’t for reasons they seem unable to fully understand. I don’t mean that as an insult of their intelligence. It’s probably closer to the opposite actually. It takes a lot of brain power to create the kind of insulated partisan bubble that many progressive live in these days.

Pamela Paul has a new column for the Times in which she explores the ideas of John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, authors of a new book titled “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?” The gist is that Democrats just aren’t as appealing as they think they are. Their fixation on culture war issues continues to make them look about as extreme as they routinely claim Republicans are.

Much of the Democratic Party’s agenda has been set by what Judis and Teixeira call the “shadow party,” a mix of donors from Wall Street, Hollywood and Silicon Valley, wealthy foundations, activist groups, the media, lobbyists and scholars…

Biden has curtailed some of its shadow party’s economic agenda — less so its cultural and social policies. There, Judis and Teixeira argue, the party seems bent on imposing a narrow progressive stance on issues like race, “sexual creationism” (commonly known as gender ideology), immigration and climate, at the expense of more broadly shared beliefs within the electorate.

The moral values may differ at each extreme of the two parties, but their efforts to moralize can sound an awful lot alike to many Americans. Even though Democrats themselves are adopting “a pretty aggressive way to change the culture,” Teixeira told me, the Democratic Party acts as if anyone who reacts against the assumptions of its progressive wing is completely off base.

“There’s a certain amount of chutzpah among Democrats to assume that it’s only the other side pursuing a culture war,” he said.

I’ve written about the culture war thing many times. Almost without fail, what the media refers to as the culture war is the conservative pushback against whatever new cultural imperative progressives are pushing. What Judis and Teixeira call “sexual creationism” is just the latest example. The media offers fawning coverage to efforts to present gender ideology in grade schools but is shocked by moderate and Republican parents who show up at school board meetings to complain about it. How dare they! 

It’s an inevitable outcome of the media being almost completely made up of cultural progressives. They really can’t see that they are the ones pushing an agenda or if they can see it, they can only see it as an unmitigated good. There is never any hazard to anything they propose, only an upside. It’s literally how you wind up with far left ideologues convincing most of the media that the time for defunding the police has finally arrived in 2020. It’s only when a bunch of people wind up dead that the media takes a second look at the thing they were just telling us was a good idea ten minutes ago.

You can see that dynamic playing out in the comments on this column. The top comments are progressives who can’t accept that progressives are the source of their own problems. No, instead they are certain it’s just about messaging.

This article ignores actual policy and reads as if Obama did not pass a landmark health insurance program that resulted in millions receiving affordable health care, or that Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPs Act which is reviving high-paying manufacturing jobs in red and blue states, many in rural areas. The problems Democrats face are so much more complex than some reductionist theory about campus progressivism and neoliberalism.

The larger problem is that even when Democrats deliver for working people, they are unable to frame these achievements in ways that resonate with the very people who most benefit. Obamacare did not create a new cohort of Democratic voters thankful to have healthcare. I think that is because Republicans are just better at emotionally-laden, rage inducing messaging, even when the policies they represent are unpopular, and they are able to frame the Democratic Party in just the ways Paul describes here, regardless of the fact that the vast majority of Democrats are more moderate.

Until Democrats figure out how to message what they represent in ways that resonate emotionally with voters, particularly working class voters who align with core traditional American values of independence and self-reliance, we will continue to be defined as Republicans want us to be, regardless of accomplishments.

Over 1,100 people have upvoted that one. What do you even say to such people? They really think Democrats aren’t emotional enough in their communications? They lack the ability to frame their arguments in a positive way? Not enough media outlets favorable to their side? As I said above, these people are living in an alternate universe of their own making. It takes a lot of effort to be this ignorant of reality. Here’s the #2 comment:

…what has been done for the working people that Texeira talks about endlessly? They are in the process of winning historical gains in the auto industry, something fully supported by President Biden, and laughably non-supported by Trump who gave a speech to non-union members,

Against this, we have “race” (really?) and sexual “creativity”? in the worst case there is progressive overreach among some college presidents, but not all by any stretch.

So progressive excess is limited to a few college presidents? Um, what about all of the students who’ve been praising Hamas in the past 3 weeks? How many progressives believe kindergartners should be taught that any boy could grow up to be a girl and vice versa? It’s a hell of a lot more than a few college presidents I can assure you. Several comments later you finally get someone willing to admit the Biden administration might have a few problems:

I am a life long Democrat – I fully support the vast majority of progressive values and goals, but crime and illegal immigration are problems – real problems.

Unless we address these issues loudly and clearly Trump and his MAGA army have a real shot at winning next year.

Let’s wrap this up with one more sensible comment.

Because so much of the Democratic political class comes from elite colleges and insulated, liberal, UMC-to-wealthy neighborhoods, they cannot understand (1) how inflation is actually hurting ordinary families such that the economy is not “good,” no matter how much Paul Krugman tries to convince us otherwise, and (2) how radical some of the stances on social issues are to ordinary Americans.

Anyone who dares to have different beliefs or adopt a more centrist stance is labeled a bigot – my daughter was canceled among her group of friends last year for saying she supported the military (her dad is a disabled vet) and wanted to be a prosecutor. How can this not be alienating to ordinary Americans?

Lots of people see what is happening and don’t like it. The fact that progressives either can’t see it or like it when they do see it doesn’t change the fact that many of their views are on the fringe.