Much ink has been spilled arguing about which major political party has become extreme in recent years.
Power Line’s Steven Hayward has a
chart from a
New York Times article which illustrates, pictorially, that the big move to the fringe was done by the Democrats.
Republicans, meanwhile, have kept on keeping on within a relatively narrow track. The two main changes in the GOP are an emphasis on controlling illegal immigration which was missing when big donors who liked cheap labor controlled party ideology and Trump’s recognition that practicing free trade with trading partners who won’t play fair is self-defeating.
Hayward’s point is that Sanders’ program isn’t that far from today’s Democrat mainstream. We and they are farther apart than has been true for decades, and most of the separation is movement leftward on their part. Thus more and more voters can say of themselves, as Ronald Reagan did, “I didn’t leave the Democrats, they left me.”
