Democrat Disaster, Biden's Salvation, or Both?

Three recent stories from different corners of the news media portend short-term, big-time electoral trouble for congressional Democrats next year. Probably the most interesting is the third of these, about the mayor of North Las Vegas -- with a population of about a quarter million -- switching to the Republican party:

Image by Elia Clerici, via Unsplash, license.

In what should be the political equivalent of the canary in the coal mine for Democrats, [Mayor John] Lee blamed the party's leftward lurch for his departure. But the Nevada mayor had far more reason ideologically than Reagan ever had to jump ship on the Democratic Party, which today is light years to the left of where it was in 1962.

The last straw, he said, was the state party's takeover by what he called avowed socialists. Nevada Democrats "had an election for leadership, and four of the five people were card-carrying members of the Socialist Party," Mr. Lee said in an April 6 Fox News Channel interview.

"It's not the party I grew up with 25 years ago in this environment, and it's not the party I can stand with anymore," Mr. Lee said. [links omitted, bold added]

I think the Washington Times could be engaging in wishful thinking about party-switching, but it says something when a relatively important local politician is this alarmed about his own party while it is in power.

The other two stories look at the raft of far-left proposals coming from Washington from the perspectives of each of America's broad political coalitions, and both indicate that these moves could spell trouble by late next year. Most notably: (1) Democrats in competitive districts are returning campaign donations from the likes of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez because they don't want their names to appear on donor lists. (This includes members who vote with Ocasio-Cortez nearly 90% of the time.) And (2) Douglas Schoen, a long-time Democrat political consultant names what would seem obvious to anyone but a member of his own party: "In terms of the political impact, eliminating the filibuster would come across to voters as a power grab by Democrats, similar to the effort to grant D.C. statehood." Schoen also calls out court packing as both "bad policy and bad politics" for the same reason, in addition to its unlikelihood of passage.

I've already indicated that I agree that these antics could well cost Democrats in the next election cycle. But what about beyond? The story about the party-switching mayor invokes the memory of former Democrat Ronald Reagan, but the overall picture has me thinking more about Bill Clinton, whose own first-term power grab was soundly rebuked in the 1994 elections. Clinton would go on to "triangulate," becoming a more centrist version of himself, and go on to get re-elected.

I struggle to see Biden surviving his first term, much less two terms, so the wild card here is Kamala Harris. Her senatorial voting record is further left than that of Bernie Sanders. Will she be committed enough to suffer the same fate as the rest of her party in her next election, or corrupt enough to pretend to moderate, just like the congress members who are currently buying themselves less frightening-looking donor rolls? Time will tell.

-- CAV