According to [Washington state Democratic Rep. Adam] Smith, the Democrats’ main problem is that they can’t govern. In large progressive cities such as Seattle, part of which lies in Smith’s district, “we’ve got a real problem with crime, homelessness, drug abuse, and affordable housing,” he said. Smith said that he’s tried meeting with various local agencies about these problems but has encountered bureaucratic incompetence and ideological retrenchment…
And yet, and yet:Smith sees ideology as the driver of Democrats’ governing failures. As he wrote to me recently, from his AOL account, “Too many people in power in these places seem to spend too much time pushing an extreme left ideology by policing language on things like pronouns, what given ethnic groups should be called and in general reeducating everyone about the evils of capitalism and all the systemic failures of America over the course of 400 years.”
This is the dilemma for Democrats like Smith: though they may have strong objections to the ideological culture of the left, they’re also uncomfortable with Trump’s program to destroy it from the right.