Ruy Teixeira has a fascinating column on Substack titled “The Democrats’ Governance Problem.” Teixeira is a Democrat political scientist who made his big splash in 2002 when he co-authored “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” a book arguing that the Democrat Party was demographically destined to become a majority party in the United States by the early 21st century. Teixeira’s column attempts to explain why his earlier book was wrong and why Kamala Harris and other Democrats did not win the 2024 elections. He claims that the Democrats have a governing problem, which keeps them promoting policies on the economy, on the border, and on crime, etc., that are radical, ineffective, unpopular, and thus, prevent them from establishing a permanent majority.
Teixeira is partially right about his theory. In fact, it isn’t really his theory at all. It has been known since the 1960s that the Democrats had a big problem when it came to governing because they were captive of their out-of-touch, left-wing voters. But Teixeira misses the grand idea that animates these left-wingers – a large portion of the Democrat base just doesn’t like the United States of America. They have a “Blame America First” ideology.
This ideology is manifested in four separate ways:
- Since the left-wing Democrats don’t like the capitalist system, which they believe is inherently unfair, they instead favor socialist policies.
- Since the left-wing Democrats think the U.S. is an evil colonialist power, they tend to believe our enemies are not at fault, and as a result, the U.S. needs to understand the concerns of our enemies and appease them.
- Since the left-wing Democrats think our system of justice is inherently unfair and racist/discriminatory, they believe that law enforcement needs to favor certain racial/ethnic/religious groups.
- Since the left-wing Democrats think the U.S. culture/society is archaic and bigoted, they believe that government should try to change these archaic and bigoted cultural/societal attitudes.
Importantly, the Blame America First Democrats frequently riot when they don’t get what they want. This makes their radicalism very, very apparent to the general population.