I live in a manufacturing city with a very strong union voice speaking into the politics of our community. Yet a fascinating and unmistakable phenomenon has been occurring over the course of the last decade or two. Though the percentage of citizens in our area who post their "Proud Union Home" yard signs has likely increased, the percentage of them identifying as, or supporting, the Democratic Party has dropped precipitously during that same time frame.
For the first time in my city's history, Republicans swept all municipal offices in the last election. So what is happening, and is it a microcosm of some larger trend?
I can't offer any scientific study or analysis; I can only tell you what I have been told. Though former President Trump attempted overtures towards the "made in America" union mentality, that isn't the most often cited rationale among Democrat dropouts. Instead, their disillusionment seems to stem from the prevailing belief that the party has been hijacked by single-issue ideologues that are willing to destroy party cohesion and solidarity if it means advancing their singular cause. More and more of these ex-party members now consider the Democrats the "Abortion First" party.
Again, that may be just the frustrated sentiments of disgruntled Dems in rural Indiana who feel as though the once big tent that embraced them has become far more rigid and dogmatic in who they welcome under the awning. Gone seem to be the days of the party's Rust Belt/Union Grit identity, replaced today with a coalition that obsesses over white guilt, pronoun pandering, and legal feticide.
To be sure, none of this proves that the party's obvious shift towards the extreme left on social and cultural issues will prove detrimental to their electoral fortunes. That remains to be seen. There are, after all, plenty of big city voters with big city values. But the change does continue to exhibit itself in ways that shock the conscience of former party members who are left wondering how this ever became the Democrats' chosen path forward.
Consider the jaw-dropping vote that occurred in the U.S. Senate last week. There, all but one Democrat senator voted to enact a radical piece of legislation that would have permitted a full-term child to be surgically dismembered up to the very moment of birth. When commentators observe that American progressives are the world's most radical voices when it comes to permitting and promoting abortion, this is exactly what they are talking about. There is nothing remotely moderate or centrist about that position.
Only West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin voted against the horrific bill, mercifully preventing its passage. And as a sign of just how complicit the media has become in the Democrat party's macabre devotion to sacrificing the blood of innocents, Manchin is being portrayed as the face of betrayal. Maybe so in New York City or San Francisco, but to many Democrats and former Democrats that I know personally, disloyalty to the party's grotesque goose-step march onto the pages of history's worst holocausts is a virtue, not a vice.
"But nobody actually has abortions that late in pregnancy!" defenders of the appalling bill protest.
- If that were true, then why author the bill in such a heinously "unnecessary" way? If such late-term abortions are truly not performed, then what evil must inhabit one's mind to concoct such a provision just for fun?
- The degree to which a person believes that these late-term abortions do not happen is directly proportional to the ruthlessly effective narrative-control performed by the propagandists masquerading as American media.
So what happens to this new, abortion-centered Democrat party? Do all the men and women it leaves behind find a home? More than a few political scientists have acknowledged that we seem to be entering a new era of party realignment. If that proves to be the case, it will be very interesting to see how broad a political coalition can be built on the back of aborted baby parts.
