Based on the past few weeks, one might say I’m back on a Ruy Teixeira kick, to which I’d say I’m always on a Ruy Teixeira kick. He’s the Mitch Daniels of the left, counseling his party’s elders — against his better interests no less — to abandon their cultural agenda and focus on the economy and working class. Since they don’t seem terribly interested in listening, Teixeira has co-written a book with John B. Judis called “Where Have All the Democrats Gone.” The title is something of a plaintive cry, made all the more plaintive by the fact these are the same men who wrote “The Emerging Democratic Majority” a little over twenty years ago.

Today’s link is a review of “Where Have All the Democrats Gone” by former Obama administration official Kenneth S. Baer. It’s fairly long, and yet there’s not a wasted word in it. Baer sees what Teixeira, Judis, and the vast majority Democratic voters see: a party apparatus needlessly sliding to the left when the path forward is clearly down the center. Independent voters aren’t crazy about Donald Trump, but that doesn’t make them de facto Democratic voters. How many elections do the party poobahs need to learn that lesson? Yes, the Democrat won in 2020, but 45,000 votes in the other direction across three states, and he would have lost. Does the party want to flirt with that kind of margin again in 2024? When Biden is currently behind Trump in five of six swing states? That seems like a poor choice to me. The party heads need to start asking, “Where have all the Democrats gone,” right now. If they don’t, they’re going to be asking the bottom of their beers next November.