I am a big fan of Fareed Zakaria. Here is what he recently wrote in his Washington Post column about the Democratic Party’s shift to the left.

“For decades, Democrats have drifted further to the left, hoping to win back working-class voters with economic policies designed to help them. It isn’t working. Rather, the right has gained ground by hammering home cultural issues. Some of the same votes Democrats seek go instead to the GOP because of issues like immigration and abortion, Fareed writes.

Rather than leaning into progressive energy, which is popular among some urban voters and highly educated Democratic staffers, Fareed suggests Democrats would do better by seeking a middle ground on cultural policies.

The answer is not for Democrats to imitate [President Donald] Trump, abandon minorities or become reactionary,” Fareed argues. “It is to stop imagining that Medicare-for-all and wealth taxes will restore the New Deal coalition. That world and that coalition are gone. The good news is that the party already has a formidable modern coalition: college-educated voters, women, minorities, younger Americans and many working- and middle-class voters in metropolitan America.

These voters want not a socialist revolution but effective liberal government that delivers—affordable housing, good schools, accessible health care, safe streets, a controlled border, legal immigration and economic growth. And perhaps this will help Democrats make inroads with the rest of the working class again, too.

Democrats need to show culturally moderate voters that liberalism can distinguish compassion from permissiveness, openness from disorder, and equality from ideological conformity. Michigan showed where the party’s energy lies for its base, the fraction of Americans who vote in primaries. The test is whether Democrats can turn that energy into a politics of common sense that appeals to the rest of the country.”

Cajun (Rick Guilbeau)