Free Republic

The weakened condition of the Democratic Party leaves it ill-prepared to defend itself against a Republican Party determined to eviscerate liberalism and the left.Evidence of the fraught state of the party can be found everywhere.Pew Research asked Democrats and Republicans whether they were optimistic or pessimistic about the future of their party after the five presidential and midterm elections from 2016 to 2024. Republicans in 2024 were more optimistic, 86-13, than after any of the previous four contests, including Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. Among Democrats, optimism fell to 51 percent, while pessimism rose to 49 percent, well below the 61-38...

There have been repeated clashes between the left and the center of the Democratic Party over the past 50-plus years, especially in the presidential nomination contests of 1968, 1972, 1984, 1992, 2016 and 2020. The post-election debate is now in full flower, with left-wing and centrist Democrats blaming each other for the loss.The selection of Kamala Harris, a woman of Black and South Asian ancestry as the nominee, might have accentuated the perception of the Democratic Party as more progressive on race and gender and made some voters feel alienated or concerned about the direction of the party.As my Times...

Donald Trump is so dependent on racial and ethnic antagonism that without it, he would be a marginal figure, relegated to the sidelines. Trump’s constant demonization of Black people and immigrants has inured the public to the fact that he is the first — or certainly the most explicit — modern president and party nominee to transparently generate, not to mention exacerbate, fear and white animosity toward people of color. Despite his appeal to a small if potentially crucial segment of Black and Hispanic men, racial bigotry has been central to Trump’s appeal from his initial quest, in 2015 and...

The mystery of 2024: How is it possible that Donald Trump has a reasonable chance of winning the presidency despite all that voters now know about him? Why hasn’t a decisive majority risen up to deny a second term to a man in line to be judged the worst president in American history?The litany of Trump’s liabilities is well known to the American electorate. His mendacity, duplicity, depravity, hypocrisy and venality are irrevocably imprinted on the psyches of American voters.Trump has made it clear that in a second term he will undermine the administration of justice, empower America’s adversaries, endanger...

Donald Trump and JD Vance are cobbling together a core constituency that includes millions of voters who are both culturally conservative and financially hard-pressed. Trump’s selection of Vance reflects his determination to focus on incorporating middle- and lower-income, predominantly but not exclusively white men and women who often did not graduate from college, into the base of the Republican Party. To do so, Trump and Vance are taking their side on matters ranging from diversity to abortion to immigration to trade policy, promising protection from pretty much everything they don’t like about America today. The 2024 Republican Platform provides evidence...

In the short term, should Joe Biden win the election and move into the White House, he would take office with a Democratic Party unified in its opposition to all things Trump. The question is how long would that last before leaders of every liberal interest group circling the new administration begin to get restless. In answer to this question, Carter Eskew, a top strategist on Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, wrote by email that Biden became a unity candidate in response to an overwhelming, almost feral desire to limit Trump’s damage to one term. When Trump leaves, Democratic unity, I...

RUSH: Here’s another little news story that… You know, if you dig deep — if you dig deep — eventually the left, the Democrats, will betray their fears. They will always tell you what they’re afraid of. They will always tell you who they are afraid of. Thomas B. Edsall in the New York Times: “Trump Is Winning the Online War — The technical superiority and sophistication of the president’s digital campaign is a hidden advantage of incumbency.” Ohhhh, it’s a “hidden advantage of incumbency.” It doesn’t have anything to do with Trump’s people! “For all his negative poll numbers...

The battle over how to project the future population of the United States has profound political implications. The question of whether America will become a majority-minority nation — and when that might happen — is intensely disputed, of enormous political import and extraordinarily complex. Two articles that appeared in the opinion section of The Times over the past few years made the case that misleading statistical artifacts used by the Census Bureau have increased the fear of a majority-minority America, a fear that played a crucial role in the 2016 election. Both Richard Alba, of CUNY, in “The Myth of...

Republicans are not satisfied with winning 62 percent of the white vote. To counter the demographic growth of Democratic constituencies whose votes threaten Republican success in high-turnout presidential elections, Republicans have begun a concerted effort to rupture the partisan loyalty of the remaining white Democratic voters. Their main target is socially liberal, fiscally conservative suburbanites, the weakest reeds in the Democratic coalition. These middle-income white voters do not share the acute economic needs of so-called downscale Democratic voters and they are less reliant on government services. The Republican strategy to win over these more culturally tolerant, but still financially pressed,...

Progressive New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall wrote on Tuesday that Democrats' embrace of Obamacare's redistribution scheme has angered and alienated working-class and middle-class Americans. "Even though midterm elections favor Republicans, the 2014 results show middle and working-class dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party rising to dangerous levels, which threatens the party's growing demographic advantages," wrote Edsall. As Breitbart News reported last Wednesday, the latest Gallup poll finds that President Barack Obama's approval rating with working-class white voters has hit an all-time low 27%. Moreover, the Gallup poll's findings were taken from opinion data collected prior to racially-charged riots in...

It’s election season, a time when pundits analyze and moralize without pause. But do the commentators who make a big deal of politics actually vote? Some have a hard time finding their way to the ballot box. Maureen Dowd, who savages politicians in her New York Times columns, was AWOL from 9 of DC’s 12 elections from 1994 through 2000. A registered DC Democrat, she voted in two general elections and missed every primary and local contest. Another Dem, The Capital Gang’s Margaret Carlson, also missed the eight DC primary and local elections during those years—despite writing an ode to...