All the signs have been pointing to it for some time but now we can come out and say it. The Democrats have resigned as a national party, if that term is to have any logical meaning at all.
To be a national party, it is necessary to willingly and in good faith attempt to reach out to all Americans. The Democrats have shown an absolute refusal to do this, and don't seem to care in the least about the inevitable repercussions that will surely befall them.
They had to know the hostility of their truly ugly campaign against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was bound to alienate them from an enormous swath of the general public. But they did it anyway. Naked partisanship blended with appalling hypocrisy and sheer hysteria is a Kool-Aid cocktail willingly downed by True Believers but that draws only revulsion from those outside the cult compound.
Little Blue Box
This ugliness can find its source in the social isolation that comes with cutting oneself off from how most Americans actually live.
A glance at the 2012 Electoral College map shows disturbing hints that Democrats were already shrinking themselves to a certain regional appeal in the Northeast and West Coast, and in large urban areas throughout the nation.
What saved Barack Obama in 2012 and sank Hillary Clinton in 2016 were the blue-collar "Rust Belt" states. This is another testament to how absolutely awful a presidential candidate Mitt Romney was, by the way. A tone-deaf Republican establishment basically gave the fading Democrats a four-year reprieve by running a stiff elitist opportunist at a time when the American people were clamoring for real change.
Donald Trump was that authentic change agent and a glance the 2016 Electoral College map shows the trap Democrats have stepped into being fully sprung. We see a sea of red in the heartland and blue mostly hugging the coasts. Democrats have crafted their own self-marginalized box.
Instead of breaking out of that narrow box in the wake of Trump's momentous victory, Democrats are myopically burrowing deeper into it. Politically speaking, this is beyond asinine. But based on what Democrats claim to believe these days, it is not only understandable. It is inevitable.
Learning all the wrong lessons from the 2012 campaign, they seem convinced that identity politics, divisiveness and pandering about "social justice" are a winning formula. This is the true Obama Legacy. Obama won in 2008 because America was desperate to turn away from the Bush-Clinton axis of the preceding 20 years. He was supposed to be the original change agent in a way John McCain never could be. Of course, he proved to be anything but that. And Hillary's resounding loss running on the same Obama-esque platform of division in 2016 was not enough to persuade Democrats of the error of their ways.
Political Immolation
All this was once again on display during the Kavanaugh clown show.
In the full throes of delusion, Democrats believe the person who is more emotional about an argument wins the argument. They are so married to identity politics that they effortlessly succumbed to the mindless "believe the woman" mantra that fueled opposition to Kavanaugh, despite a total lack of substantial corroborative evidence concerning the claims made against him.
Crazed to the bitter end, progressives in the party then demanded that senators in red states commit political ritual suicide in support of what can only be called a religious tenet within the modern Democratic Party.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), up for re-election in a state that heavily backs President Trump, announced his support for Kavanaugh's nomination. West Virginians overwhelmingly favor Kavanaugh being confirmed, according to polling.
What was the response to Manchin's pragmatic decision? Two leading Democrat fundraising groups immediately announced they would pull all financial support from him.
Meanwhile in red North Dakota, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is trailing in her re-election campaign by a hefty 10-point margin. In a recent poll, 60% of North Dakotans supported Kavanaugh's nomination and only 27% were opposed.
So what does Heitkamp decide to do? She announces she will vote against Kavanaugh. Democrats will cheer her for it. Media allies like the fabulist Washington Post will turn reality on its head and paint the decision as politically savvy. But the end result will be Democrats falling deeper and deeper into that self-marginalized box of theirs.
Democrats may be a mortal lock to win the mayoralty of San Francisco for decades to come. And they will hold down other urban strongholds as well. But their strident, emotion-driven leftist rigidity rules them out as a truly national force in American politics over the years to come. Too blind to see this, they will be left to screech hysterically in their claustrophobic shoebox while the country moves on without them.
