DEMOCRATS ARE DANGEROUS EXTREMISTS, SAYS OUR ENTIRE POLITICAL CULTURE

I was appalled by this tweet, which is quoted in a Jamelle Bouie column about the rush to eliminate Black-majority congressional and legislative districts in the South:

“For too long, Tennessee politics has been dominated by cosmopolitan communists and race hustlers imposing their corrupt will on a deeply rural and conservative state,” Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee wrote on X last week. “The General Assembly’s constitutional redrawing of Federal Districts affirms a foundational truth: Tennessee must be represented by Tennesseans, not socialist democrats.”

Ogles asserts that Democrats are radical extremists. He's a Republican -- of course he would say that.

But Barney Frank -- a lifelong Democrat and one of the first openly gay members of Congress -- is saying similar things. Frank is 86 years old and is dying, and his final public act is the publication of a new book chastizing Democrats for being radical extremists, accompanied by a media tour. In an interview with Jenna Russell of The New York Times, Frank says this:

The key to liberal democracy being able to come back is to get rid of the perception, that we have allowed to grow, that the entire Democratic Party is committed to a series of very drastic social reconstructions that go beyond the politically acceptable.

Most of my mainstream Democratic colleagues agree with me, but they have been reluctant to say that because they’re afraid of being attacked in primaries and accused of being secret conservatives.

And this:

I think it would be a better world, a better America, if somehow everybody had Medicare. But they don’t. And so something that I think would be very helpful, substantively and politically, is to reduce the age of Medicare to 60 from 65. A lot of families would benefit.

You could do it right away, and it would work, and it would build support for going even further. But the left does not support an increase in Medicare coverage. They want to do something more revolutionary.

And this:

... when the financial crisis comes in 2008, people then become convinced that this inequality that’s been building up is not God’s law — it’s the choice of the establishment to do it. And so the left began to campaign to take inequality into account, and they did surprisingly well.

By the end of the decade, most Democrats were ready to deal with inequality, as Biden was, and they were acknowledging that the left was right. But instead of, sort of, taking yes for an answer, some people on the left, who believed there was a lot more wrong with America than simply economic inequality, said: See? We were right, and we’re not going to stop with economics. We’re going after all these racial and cultural things.

Imagine you're a moderate voter -- not a low-information voter, but not a high-information voter, either. You come across the Ogles tweet and maybe it sounds a bit extreme. But you also come across an interview with Barney Frank and he's saying essentially the same thing. The Democratic Party is in thrall to radicals. These radicals intimidate politicians to their right and make them cower in fear.

It appears that there's one thing people across the political spectrum can agree on: Democrats are radical and bad. And maybe that's why President Trump has a -23 approval rating, according to G. Elliott Morris, but the Democratic lead on the generic congressional ballot is only 5 points.

I continue to believe that American voters think the Democratic Party is bad because the loudest Democratic voices regularly say they agree with Republican loudmouths that the Democratic Party is bad.

Though it would also be nice if Democrats could secure real benefits for ordinary people when they have power -- Barney Frank implies that President Biden really did "deal with inequality" when he was president, whereas, in reality, Biden had to scale his program back dramatically in order to get it past Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Maybe if Democrats could deliver real change, we wouldn't have to hear endless whining along the lines of "Oh, all Democrats care about is pronouns."

And as for what Andy Ogles says: No, Tennessee politics has not been "dominated by cosmopolitan communists" until now. Here's a partial list of bills passed by the Tennessee legislature last year:

DEI Restrictions in Public Institutions

Lawmakers approved legislation banning local governments and public colleges from considering race, gender, or age in hiring decisions. DEI offices and demographic-based board requirements were also dismantled, aligning with broader national efforts to curtail diversity initiatives....

Immigration Enforcement Measures

A new law criminalizes the intentional transport, housing or concealment of undocumented individuals for financial gain. The law is part of a broader crackdown on immigration, including the creation of a centralized state immigration enforcement division....

Education Freedom Act

In a special session, the legislature passed a universal school voucher program, allowing families statewide to use taxpayer funds for private school tuition.

And this week, in response to Democratic protests against gerrymandering, majority Republicans in the Tennessee House have removed Democrats from committees:

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton removed Democratic lawmakers from House standing committees and subcommittees on Tuesday following disruptions during the recent special session on congressional redistricting....

“Members of the Democratic Caucus will receive individual letters removing them from all standing committees and subcommittees of the House,” Sexton wrote.

Individual letters sent to lawmakers informed them they had been removed from committee assignments. One letter sent to Democratic Leader Karen Camper stated she would only remain on the Government Operations Committee, as required under House rules.

Barney Frank could have spent his last few months on earth calling attention to the dangerous radicalism of the GOP. Instead, he's helping those radical Republicans as they kick Democrats when they're down, landing some kicks of his own, literally with his dying breaths.