Looking for the ‘moderate’ Democrats

Last week, I heard a number of puzzling statements from Laura Ingraham and other Fox news contributors about those “moderate Democrats” whom their party leaders were dissing by choosing Kamala Harris as their presidential candidate. Among these putative “moderates” are Gretchen Whitmer, Sherod Brown, Mark Kelly, and my own Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. When John Morgan, a Florida Democratic donor, appeared on Ingraham’s program to say he wouldn’t be giving Kamala any money because he preferred other Democratic presidential candidates, the host sympathized with Morgan’s concern. She bewailed his fate as an abandoned Democrat whose “party is gone. Its ship has sailed.”

Although I’m open to the argument that Kamala may be a bit wackier than other, less uninhibited members of her party, I don’t notice much difference between their key positions. For example, which of the Democrats whom Ingraham mentioned favors banning third-trimester abortions or diversity, equity, and inclusion schemes? Which one has protested having biological men competing in women’s sports or has declaimed against Biden for opening up this country to 10 million or more illegal aliens?

Decidedly left-leaning Democrats, like Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, have now been elevated to the status of moderate, traditional Democrats.

Let me stand corrected on this last point. Kelly, who represents Arizona, a state that is being overrun by illegal aliens, has intermittently faulted the Democratic administration for not properly addressing the crisis on his state’s southern border. But if the same Democratic senator were from, say, my state of Pennsylvania, he’d probably have remained mum on something that is less of a wedge issue here than in the southwest. That John Fetterman complained about Biden’s immigration nonpolicy was a cause for celebration on Fox News, but I would remind readers that our junior senator remained to the bitter end a staunch Biden supporter. He now backs Harris.

Political advocates like to evoke “honorable opponents” whom they tell us have now disappeared. Supposedly, these noble adversaries were around up until recently but are now fading from view. I’ve been encountering this practice most recently among Republican critics of Harris. It consists of recalling nostalgically the old Democratic Party, which existed up until five seconds ago but which was then replaced by Kamala’s fans. That change came at the very moment Democratic leaders began backing Biden’s replacement.

Unfortunately, this game is pushing a laughable narrative, in fact, one that is hardly consistent with the nonstop attacks on the Democrats engaged in by Fox News celebrities for the last three and a half years. Listening to this channel before Biden withdrew from the race, I would have had no clue that the feminist, abortion-happy, DEI-infatuated Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan belonged to the Democratic Party’s moderate past. Listening to Laura Ingraham last week, I might have mistaken this raging feminist and lockdown-maniac for Thomas Jefferson or Grover Cleveland, or perhaps closer to our time, Adlai Stevenson or JFK. Assuming the “moderate Democrats” saw their ship sail away just last week, perhaps I should also dismiss all those negative things Ingraham has been saying about Democrats for years. (For the record, I agree with them.)

Decidedly left-leaning, woke Democrats like George Latimer, who defeated Jamaal Bowman in a New York State congressional primary a few weeks ago, and Josh Shapiro have now been elevated to the status of moderate, traditional Democrats. Not at all incidentally, these figures are well to the left of where most Democrats were 20 years ago, although slightly less so than others in the more progressive wing of their party.

Although Latimer speaks more grammatically than Bowman and less viciously about the Israelis, the flattering word “moderate” hardly comes to mind in his case. On social issues, particularly unrestricted abortion through the third trimester and DEI, Latimer is exactly where New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Joe Biden have been. I defy anyone, including Latimer’s fans in the Murdoch media, to point out a single difference.

The one position that supposedly proves that Shapiro is some kind of “moderate” is his decision to provide school vouchers. Shapiro, we are told, did this in defiance of the teachers’ unions, which are a main funder of the Democratic Party. But Shapiro took that step after waffling and then changed his mind after he decided not to include vouchers in his state budget.

He finally took the plunge because blacks are a major Democratic constituency; and while these Democratic voters dutifully support Shapiro’s party, they expect financial assistance for charter schools, which they like and use. That Shapiro ultimately bent to this constituency after checking other options hardly shows that he’s a “traditional” Democrat, any more than is our senior U.S. senator, Robert Casey Jr. Both are Biden Democrats who happily support Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee.

If Shapiro is asked to accept the Democratic vice-presidential nomination and turns it down, the reason will certainly not be ideological. He may decide the frontrunner is a loser and therefore put off his presidential ambitions until 2028. Unlike John Morgan, Shapiro most definitely does not feel abandoned by the Democratic Party.