Julian Epstein, a self-described Democratic centrist offers the following advice to his party as it tries to climb out of the wreckage of last week’s sound defeat at the hands of Donald Trump and his supporters:

Like the Phoenix, the Trump victory could be the best thing to happen to Democrats if they shift to the center with an emphasis on building things rather than tearing the other side down.  But to do that, the Democratic clerics who lead groupthink will have to step up and say no to the mainstream media and cable voices—along with activists and politicians who all have their narrow, self-serving motivations to be the morality leaders of Resist 2.0.

Epstein is presenting the now widespread view that the Democrats have allowed themselves to be enslaved by woke elitists who are driving them into the ground. They are further being misled by “new religious clerics,” like Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi, who have pushed their party into taking unpopular positions, e.g., welcoming millions of illegals into the country, pushing DEI and the transgendered agenda, and pursuing extravagant abortion politics. All such policies have failed to win the support of a majority of American voters. Epstein therefore believes that it might be best if the Democrats changed their campaign focus from pushing eccentric social politics to bread-and-butter issues.

 Fox News has been offering a variation of this argument in the form of an apodictic assertion that goes something like this: Most Americans are “in the center,” however Fox pundits may choose to define that mystical term. Indeed, according to this formulation, most Americans lean toward the conservative side, although it’s not clear on the basis of what evidence this proposition has been determined.  Supposedly the Democrats took a drubbing in our national election because they underestimated the social conservatism of their voters.

I’m not sure that I entirely disagree with this interpretation, but I would put forth an alternative view for consideration. Despite its recent operational ineptitude, the Democratic Party may be positioned exactly where it should be, given where its base is located and given the direction in which the party has been moving for decades. Democrats may have trouble going back to the past and credibly rebranding themselves the “working class party,” since Trump has effectively laid claim to that identity. Two-thirds of blue-collar voters gave their votes to The Donald last week, whereas the Democrats did well with other demographics, more specifically black women, college-educated white women, government workers, and academics.

 Democratic leaders began changing the character of their party in the late 1960s when the party moved away from older leadership, e.g., Catholic ethnic labor champions and Southern white Protestants, and came increasingly under the guidance of Northern Jewish progressives and black civil rights advocates. Although they made periodic attempts afterwards to accommodate traditional Democratic constituencies, the party moved gradually toward what it is now, namely a vehicle of leftist cultural change.

The culminating point may have been reached with Barack Obama’s presidency and with his successful attempt to control the direction of his party. Under Obama’s presidency woke personnel were moved into all aspects of public administration, including the civil service and military command. The Democratic Party did not assume its present identity entirely over the last four years. It has been assuming its present intersectional form for decades, while acquiring a mass constituency that is in sync with the party’s changed direction. 

It should also be stressed that the Democratic Party, everything considered, did not do badly in this month’s elections. Considering that the party was running with an embarrassingly inept presidential candidate, who had been thrust on the voters without winning a single primary vote, and considering how disastrously the Biden administration performed in just about everything it undertook, Democrats emerged from this month’s contests with sustainable losses. Kamala fell behind her far more energetic opponent by only about four million votes, and some very woke senatorial and congressional candidates pulled out victories in purplish states, like Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona. In our largest state, California, woke left dominance persists under Governor Gavin Newsom, as it does in Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois and other populous states.

The legacy media and most of the upper five percent of the income curve continue to stand behind the Democratic Party in its present woke incarnation. In any election the party can easily raise two to three times as much money as its usually money-strapped opposition. Even if the Dems have moved away from a culturally “unprogressive” working class, they have done more than survive. They have fashioned a large, powerful, devoted base that enables them to win elections and control blue states.

Please note that I am not in any way endorsing the views and positions associated with this Democratic base, which I find to be thoroughly abhorrent and profoundly evil. What I’m doing is considering the argument that the Democrats would do well to return to their old identity, when they were still a working-class party. The populist right is filling that need; and as long as the Democratic Party serves its culturally radical base, it will go on turning off the relatively conservative working class. But the Democrats have created an alternative base; and it is flush with money and votes. If the Dems have pushed the envelope too far with the trans issue, they are not locked into that position. They can easily move the emphasis back to feminism, gay rights, and fighting “white privilege” without leaving behind their constituency.