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Democrats Go Hard Left, Media Yawn
The least covered Big Story in the media right now is the severe leftward lurch of the Democrat Party. Four avowed Socialists won primary elections in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Democrats on the city council of Seattle, led by an avowed socialist who once proposed confiscating the Boeing aircraft factory, just forced through a punitive anti-business tax. Progressive Democrats from Andrew Cuomo to Dianne Feinstein are being challenged from their left by candidates in the socialist Bernie Sanders mode. Sanders himself, absent some chicanery from the DNC, would very likely have been the party’s nominee for president in 2016.
For most of my adult life, the media have been replete with stories and editorials forever fretting that “the Republican Party has been taken over by the hard-right.” Forever, the Republicans were counseled to “take back your party from the radical right, move to the center.” Republicans have been ever lectured to abandon “divisive social issues,” in the same way that Democrats are never, ever counseled to moderate their positions on taxes, spending, and regulation. The media complex is desirous that Republicans stop running on the policies that have made them the dominant party of the southern and interior United States, and instead adopt the policies of New England Republicans. (Just how many Republicans does New England send to Congress anyway?)
Meanwhile, the Democrat Party lurches hard to the Socialist left, and there is hardly a peep from the media. On those rare occasions when it is remarked upon, it’s not in the dire tones of doom that the ascendancy of conservatism in the Republican Party rated. It’s more of a soft “generational shift” like in this LA Times article.
This hard-left lurch of the Democrat Party would seem to be a topic worthy of a higher level of scrutiny. Instead, the media are too busy broadcasting the claims of a porn star’s shyster lawyer.
Published in Politics
And the Republicans listened and did it! Don’t take advice from your enemies.
The media is silent because they’re complicit, even leading the way. The editor of the NYT even said so several months ago. My hope is that they will eventually self-destruct–a person can hope, can’t she??
A few months ago someone here on Ricochet posted some graphics that depicted the Left/Right distribution of the 2 major parties over time. (Pew Research data maybe?). My search capabilities are limited on my phone. I’d love to see those presented again here.
They showed the Dems relentless march to the Left and the Reps back and forthing around the center … drifting ever so slightly Right.
Anyone recall those?
I agree with Susan. VTK – you make some great points here. The media isn’t catching it as big news because they can’t recognize a political shift when they are immersed in it. Also, the social engineering taking place by the left is certainly interesting – who started all this “blank privilege” stuff (you fill in the blank – there’s so many)? That is sad for my home state of PA – I wonder if it is just concentrated in the inner cities?
Once those Socialists have real power, the first entities they take over are the Media. I would like to see the New York Times owned by Kshama Sawant. The Sulzberger family might not be too happy to have all their wealth confiscated, and themselves turned out of their mansions.
They just got done lionizing Marx and Marxism on wrongheaded Karl’s 200th birthday.
A none trivial portion of this is a direct result of how the right positioned Bush, a center-lefty. If bush is a conservatives conservative then hell Bernie Sanders is the center of the left.
The media could at least ask them if they think Lenin’s NEP was a mistake.
True that. There’s an article in the New York Times gushing over how the new Democrat governor of New Jersey is pushing a progressive left, tax and spend agenda.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/nyregion/new-jersey-emerges-as-a-liberal-bulwark-under-murphy.html
Don’t remind me. That i’jit is my Governor.
Found ‘em!
http://www.people-press.org/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/
Within the city of Pittsburgh, the Democrat primary is the election most of the time.
I’m using the word “Mixed” in the Legend as a marker. A landmark for comparison purposes.
In 1994, the medial Rep was just about over the “d” and the median Dem was just about over the “i”
By 2004 the median Rep had moved Left. The median Rep was now almost over the “i”. The Medial Dem has moved Left.
By 2017 the median Rep has moved back Right … but still pretty close to where they were in 1994. But the median Dem is close to the Left edge.
Rush Limbaugh’s theory is that the media (though he mostly talks about the “news”/indoctrination division and doesn’t always include the education/indoctrination and entertainment/indoctrination divisions) runs the show and the Democrat Party’s role is to carry out the program.
I wish they hadn’t used the “liberal” label, though. Democrats today are the most illiberal party we’ve ever seen!
VTK is quite right. You’d think there would be a story here about what is clearly a dramatic shift in philosophy for the mainstream Democrats. But hardly a peep. The media is just too happy it’s happening and aren’t going to do anything to draw unwanted attention.
The exact same thing happens on the other end of the state….
But we get bonus points for having some districts record over 100% turnout in presidential elections.
Yes, in the Philadelphia precincts where there was a 100% turnout and 100% Obama vote, it was obviously fraud, as we saw in Florida, there are always errors that make 100% impossible, but what is anyone doing about it? Moreover, the neo marxist control of almost all of the media, Hollywood, foundations, academia and most organized associations at the Washington level isn’t an accident. This drift to the hard left may give us an edge in a few elections but they take the high ground, dig in, don’t change and replicate their power.