Ex-ambassador Rahm Emanuel is now the latest of a growing number of Democrats to blow their tops over their party’s obsession with nutty cultural and identity issues.
Democrats have “lost the plot,” the former Chicago mayor and Obama chief of staff railed last week. “From ‘Latinx,’ to defunding the police, to ‘Police organizations are all racist,’ to bringing a set of cultural wars to our schools. We are on the losing side of those cultural wars. Full stop.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has also urged Democrats to be more “culturally normal” if they want to win voters.
Emanuel and Newsom, both likely presidential contenders, along with other Dems, insist the donkey make a clear course correction ahead of the 2028 election.
Alas, the Dem establishment continues to kowtow to special interests and its radical, out-of-touch base instead.
One issue, in particular, sticks out: schools.
Democrats are “worried about bathroom access and locker room access,” scoffs Emanuel. Meanwhile, “you have 50% of our kids not reading at grade level.”
It’s a perfect example of Dems’ detachment from middle-class values — quality education.
Their blanket opposition to ICE and tough law enforcement also turns off average, middle-class voters.
Yet in the case of schools, Dems are trapped: Because they’ve sold themselves to teachers unions, they don’t dare back meaningful measures that could truly improve education if the teachers unions oppose them.
High standards, teacher accountability, school choice, merit pay — the heads of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers see such goals as threats to their members, and they’re the ones who call the shots for Democrats.
So Dems focus on fringe issues, like bathroom access.
They’ve also become the party of white, left-leaning, college-educated, radical elites who champion issues like climate change and open borders at the expense of the working class and economic growth.
Back in 1992, when rascally Democratic operative James Carville uttered the now-iconic statement, “It’s the economy, stupid,” he was making plain the need to address matters that are truly important to most voters.
Yet more than 30 years later, Dems are again devoid of a universally appealing message to lead them out of the wilderness.
They’ll also need to tackle the growing extremism, antisemitism and anti-Americanism within their ranks.
DEI, woke politics and niche identity issues, like bathroom access, have alienated Dems from the kitchen-table concerns.
They can gripe all they want about Republicans, but if they don’t appeal to average Americans, it’s hard to see how they’ll ever secure a commanding lead at the polls.
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