In the iconic Western film “High Noon,” Marshal Will Kane, played by Gary Cooper, is left alone to do battle with a gang of outlaws. The townspeople, all of Kane’s “friends” and even his own deputy turn their back on him, and indeed their own town, in their collective hour of need.
That film serves as a metaphor for the multiple problems now plaguing the Democratic Party, not the least of which is its loss of touch with working-class and disenfranchised voters. A significant number of what used to be their base — including many non-white voters — have been turned off by identity politics at a record pace.
The “Will Kane” in this case is any commonsense, pragmatic, populist Democrat of stature. The town is the Democratic Party. Those on the far left and many in the media will assume that the “gang of outlaws” is President Trump and his administration. Unfortunately for the viability of the Democratic Party, that kind of knee-jerk reaction only further erodes the party’s support.
The “outlaws” in this case are the far-left fringe within the Democratic Party. Those are the outlaws and the bullies that the regular town-folk of Democratville are petrified to call out. One Democrat who has sent signals that he now understands that is California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
On a recent episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Newsom went on about how “the Democratic brand is toxic right now” and that “cancel culture” was one of the reasons. Newsom also agreed when Maher quoted Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) that if there are not drastic changes, the Democratic Party is going to become “the permanent minority.”
People often say that Newsom looks like a candidate from Hollywood central casting. Now, he seems like he is trying to fit the bill and ride to the rescue of the townspeople of Democratville. Except many of the people in his own “town” can’t stand him, and Republicans and many independents believe him to be a political chameleon willing to say or do anything to get elected.
Within his own party, Newsom has a huge problem. Much of the younger far-left embraces “out with the old and in with the new.” They not only see Newsom as part of the “old” but they are also angry with him for even pretending to talk with the other side — most especially after he dared to invite the “evil” Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk on to his podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom.”
That said, Newsom still at least knows that the “new” in this case has a very narrow and siloed support base. Two of the voices now regularly talked about by those who want to jettison the “old” are Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Both were recently back in the news — Crockett for calling the president a “MoFo,” and Ocasio-Cortez for soundly beating Chuck Schumer in a poll for a (still just hypothetical) primary matchup for his New York Senate seat in 2028.
To be sure, both Ocasio-Cortez and Crockett have seemingly large bases of support. But when you zoom back and look down upon that support, you see that it is only a sliver in a much larger pie. That sliver is filled with far-left voters who often favor socialist solutions. The rest of the pie is filled with “November” Democratic voters who are often more centrist and traditional.
Therein lies part of the Democrats' greater problem. The ouster through primary elections of the established, older, supposedly ...
