The radicalization of the Democratic Party is astoundingly popular

The Democratic Party is stampeding towards the left — and embracing popular positions

Protesters and the Democratic symbol.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Scott Olson/Getty Images, Sarah Morris/Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons)

A few years ago, political scientists and some popular commentators began examining a phenomenon known as "asymmetric polarization," a fancy way of saying that while the two parties were moving apart ideologically, they weren't doing so at the same rate. For a variety of reasons, Republicans were heading faster to the ideological edges. "Republicans are galloping right while Democrats are trotting left," wrote Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson in their 2006 book Off Center; or as David Roberts put it, "The left's gone left but the right's gone nuts."

There was copious evidence in congressional votes and public opinion to substantiate that assertion, not to mention the entire lunatic phenomenon of the Tea Party, which culminated in the nomination and election of President Trump. But in just the last couple of years, we may have seen a reversal, in which Democrats are the ones who are changing while Republicans aren't, or at least aren't as much. Part of the reason may be that there's only so much room on the right for the Republican Party to go, unless they propose to turn The Handmaid's Tale into a documentary, bring back child labor, and round up all the endangered species for processing into lunch meat. But Democrats are undergoing a much more striking ideological evolution right now, genuinely turning into a more emphatically liberal party.

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Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman is a senior writer with The American Prospect magazine and a blogger for The Washington Post. His writing has appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and web sites, and he is the author or co-author of four books on media and politics.