A messy, but winning political coalition

Two political parties dominate American politics. Broadly, one tends to be liberal, the other conservative. The left-leaning Democratic Party is the party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.

The right-leaning Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln. 

Third parties have served as spoilers, not victors, in American presidential politics over the years. The most successful: Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive (Bull Moose) Party which garnered 27% of the popular vote in 1912, throwing the election to the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson.

Ross Perot’s Independent Party garnered 19% of the popular vote in 1992, throwing the election to the Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton.

The Democratic Party is split into two camps

Third parties have had minimal impact on presidential elections in recent years. But in the past decade, a chasm has formed within the Democratic Party, splitting them into two separate ideological camps. The split presents opportunity for the pro-life movement which largely votes Republican.

Today, the Democratic Party is dominated by their progressive wing, which comprises roughly a third of the party numerically, but exerts undue influence on the party platform and choice of candidates.

A substantial portion of the rest of the party aligns more closely with Republicans on major issues, beginning with abortion.

The Marist Poll asks more nuanced questions on the subject of abortion than other polling organizations. Their January poll, commissioned by The Knights of Columbus, reveals the Democratic party is not as pro-abortion as their public rhetoric suggests.

• For example, 40% of Democrats, says Marist, believe abortion should be limited to the first trimester or less, in contrast to the progressive wing which demands unfettered, unregulated abortion the full forty months of pregnancy.
• A third of the party opposes tax-payer-funded abortion.
• 55% oppose using taxpayer dollars to fund abortions abroad.
• 45% don’t believe Catholic doctors, nurses, and other people of faith should be compelled to perform abortions in violation of their consciences.
• Since some states allow the abortion pill to be mailed, 46% believe a doctor appointment should be mandated by law before a woman receives the pills.
• 79% support Pregnancy Resource Centers which don’t provide abortions, but instead offer support to people during their pregnancy and after the baby is born.
• 78% support laws that protect both the health of the woman and the life of the unborn.
• 48% believe limits should be placed on abortion.

As you can see, the progressive wing, with their extreme views, pits themselves against the rest of their own party on abortion issues.

Abortion isn’t a single issue, as the Marist Poll reveals. Large swaths of the Democratic Party align more closely with Republicans on this issue than the progressive firebrands within their own party.

Rank and file Democrats agree with Republicans on other issues

Common ground with Republicans extends to other issues as well.

A Harvard/CAPS/Harris Poll identified broad public support for the recently-passed ‘One Big Beautiful Bill.’ According to the poll, a majority of voters who had heard of the bill supported 17 out of 21 of its provisions, with Democrats supporting a number of these proposals as well:

• 70% of Democrats supported expanded health savings accounts and increased support for farmers, ranchers, and disaster recover.
• 57% supported proposals to reduced federal spending by $1.3 Trillion.
• 63% supported increasing the child tax credit to $2,200 per family permanently.
• 54% supported no income taxes on tips and overtime pay for workers earning under $150,000, capped at $25,000 annually until 2028.
• 55% supported boosting military and naval spending and modernizing air traffic control.
• 60% supported investing in rural broadband.
• 51% supported establishing tax-exempt savings accounts for parents, offering a one-time $1,000 credit per child, with a $5000 annual contribution limit.

Dems split on trans issues

The Democratic Party is badly divided on the trans issue, according to polling conducted by Pew Research. Blacks and Hispanics who tend to vote Democrat align more closely with Republican voters on this issue. 68% percent of white Democrats say society hasn’t gone far enough in accepting transgender people, compared with just half of Hispanic and 46% of black Democrats.

Overall among Democratic-leaning voters, 45% believe trans athletes should be required to compete on teams that match their sex at birth.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has called for radical change in the United States in other areas, such as defunding the police, eliminating bail and putting criminals back out on the streets, allowing homelessness to proliferate, and imposing costly and ineffective climate initiatives, to name a few.

They believe the U.S. is “systemically” racist, code words for tearing down the current system of checks and balances and division of power as explicated in the U.S. Constitution.

They call for an end to the Electoral College and the Senate’s filibuster. They demand Medicare for all (already a fiscally unsound program) which would include taxpayer funded abortion through the third trimester.

Progressives rebrand their party’s name

Many of the party’s shining stars don’t even call themselves Democrats anymore, but rather Democratic Socialists. They include the likes of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and their newest shining star, Zohran Mamdani who just secured the Democratic Party’s candidacy for Mayor of New York City.

Mamdani’s ascent alarmed more moderate Democrats, like New York Congressman, Tom Suozzi, who expressed his misgivings in The Wall Street Journal:

“Mr. Mamdani’s campaign made lofty, utopian promises: free public transit, free college tuition, more public housing, sweeping debt cancellation and massive overhauls of systems far beyond his authority, all paid for by huge tax increases. The last thing New York and other blue jurisdictions need is higher taxes. People are already fleeing cities and states with sky-high taxes.”

In addition to socialist economic policies, Mamdani embraces the most extreme positions on abortion and trans issues. His embrace of anti-semitic rhetoric has drawn rebukes from within his own party when he refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.” Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor, Josh Shapiro, lashed back:

“You have to speak and act with moral clarity, and when supporters of yours say things that are blatantly antisemitic, you can’t leave room for that to just sit there. You’ve got to condemn that.”

Republicans have their own factions

The Republican Party has always had their own set of factions. But fault lines within the Democratic Party have splintered into a cavernous divide between party elites and rank and file Democratic voters, as polling data above confirms.

The party planks of today’s Democratic Party would be unrecognizable to Democrats but one-generation removed.

Many of their working class voters bear the brunt of these policies, weakening their loyalty to the party. Many migrated to the Republican Party last election which is increasingly perceived as the “party of the little guy.”

The glue that seems to hold the Democratic Party together is their antipathy towards President Trump, who won’t be on the ballot next presidential election cycle.

Pro-life Republicans may want to take a lesson from the founder of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson.

Most modern voters don’t realize the party was originally called the Republican Party. True. Like today’s Republican Party, yesterday’s Democratic-Republicans embraced state rights and opposed Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Party, which promoted a strong, monarchical federal government. In fact, the party name morphed into the Democratic-Republicans until shortened to just the Democratic Party under Andrew Jackson.

What would a modern-day Democratic-Republican Party look like? It would be the party of the little guy, beginning with the tiniest among us, the unborn, to whom the preamble of the Constitution refer to as our posterity. It would be a party that acknowledges God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And like all Democratic-Republican governments, it would be a messy, but winning coalition.

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