This Ain’t Your Father’s Democratic Party

Joe Biden commonly uses the phrase “This Ain’t your Father’s Republican Party”. He uses it to suggest that the Republicans have become a right wing extremist party. He also uses another phrase: “MAGA Republicans,” to suggest extremists in the GOP. In actuality when you look at the policies of Republican’s today, they have remained quite consistent and have if anything shifted to the left. On the other hand, the Democrats have shifted so far to the left, that your classically liberal father, is now a Republican, and some people in the party may actually call him a far right extremist. Let’s analyze the massive shift that has taken place in the past 15 years.

Abortion

Republicans have been very consistent on their position on Abortion; they are vehemently against it. Since the Roe v Wade decision in 1973, conservatives worked very hard to overturn it, and were successful at overturning it. On the other hand, as recently as 2008, Democrats such as Hillary Clinton took the position of “safe, legal, and rare”. During her campaign, she even said in a townhall that by rare she meant Rare. In 2016 it changed to “safe and legal”, to now Democrats accepting a position of abortion at any point in pregnancy, essentially using it as form of birth control. Blue states like California have no enshrined it into the State Constitution. The abortion debate is very complex, but there’s no denying that the Democrats have moved very far left on this issue over the past 15 years that they are now to the left of most European countries.

LGBTQ

Democrats went from the belief that Marriage is between a man and a woman in 2008, to marriage can be a bond between anyone, and if you disagree on the traditional belief that has existed for thousands of years, you’re homophobic. But they’ve gone a step further to now fully embrace the idea that men can be women. A Pew Research study found that 72% of democrats under the age of 30 believe that someone can be a Man or a Woman, regardless of sex. When Republicans were asked the same question, it found that consistently about 8 and 10 Republicans across age groups believed that a persons gender is determined by their sex at birth.

Religion

Democrats have increasingly moved away from religion over the past 15 years. In fact, they endorsed policies that are anti Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. These policies include their aforementioned stances on abortion and gay marriage but also include the culturally leftist social movements that have filled the void for a lot of people on the left, in the absence of religion. A Pew Research study found that 38% of the electorate in the 2020 voting season were religiously unaffiliated compared to 24% in 2012 and only 18% in 2008. This is in contrast to Republicans in 2020 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, compared to 11% in 2012, and 9% in 2008. This represents a substantial shift to the left for the Democratic Party and a minor shift to the left for the Republican Party.

The Democrats have shifted so far to the left that you even find classical liberals like Bill Maher agreeing with a lot of conservatives on issues related to critical race theory, transgenderism, and the lab leak theory. These are reasonable topics to have debates on, but if Democrats continue to try and make their increasingly leftist opinions axiomatic, they will face the backlash from ordinary Americans. That I can tell you.