The Democrats’ Crack-Up Turned Blow-Up

by Paul Kengor March 15, 2019

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., venerable founder of this august publication, posted an important piece on Wednesday, titled, “The Left-Wing Crack-Up.” Tyrrell there revisited a term he popularized decades ago, captured in books such as The Liberal Crack-Up and The Clinton Crack-Up. It reminds of another apt phrase he popularized, “The Death of Liberalism,” also the title of one of his books.

For a fun stroll down memory lane, I recommend that readers click these Tyrrell interviews with C-SPAN on February 6, 2011 and May 24, 2012. One particularly memorable Tyrrellism was his assertion that “there are more nudists than liberals, more birdwatchers than liberals, and more nudist birdwatchers than liberals.”

A prophetic point it was, made all the more obvious as the renowned Democratic Party diminishes into a smog of radical leftism. Ask yourself: How many true liberals are there in today’s Democratic Party? Of course, it depends on how you define a liberal, which is never easy. How many progressives are there in today’s Democratic Party?

Well, it depends on how you define a progressive, which is likewise elusive — though more and more liberals prefer the progressive label. But here’s a more telling question: How many self-described socialists, or “democratic socialists,” are there in today’s Democratic Party? The answer is a rapidly increasing number, particularly among the party’s leaders and celebrities, from Bernie Sanders (who received 13 million votes in the Democratic Primary in 2016) to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez...........We are right now living through the death of the historic Democratic Party as you knew it...........To Read More....