Democrats moving to the left, becoming the ‘pre-Clinton’ party

Conservative commentator Peter Wehner makes the case in Wednesday’s New York Times that the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left and has paid the price at the ballot box.
He warns that Democrats who believe they have a lock on the Electoral College should beware of the impact lefties such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (and, of course, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders) will have on Hillary Clinton as she courts the liberal base during the 2016 primary season.
In an Op-Ed column, Wehner writes that the Democrats have reverted back to the “pre-Bill Clinton” party of the 1980s. President Barack Obama has let loose his “inner progressive” and the left-wing of the party is pushing him to go further.

Here’s a portion of the piece:

“To see just how far the Democratic Party has moved to the left, compare Barack Obama with Bill Clinton. In 1992, Mr. Clinton ran as a centrist New Democrat. In several respects he governed as one as well. He endorsed a sentencing policy of ‘three strikes and you’re out,’ and he proposed adding 100,000 police officers to the streets.
“… The Democratic Party is now a pre-Bill Clinton party, the result of Mr. Obama’s own ideological predilections and the coalition he has built. Liberals will argue that the Democratic Party has benefited from this movement to the left and cite the election victories of Mr. Obama as evidence of it. The nation has become more liberal, they say, and the Democratic Party has wisely moved with it.

“In some respects, like gay rights, the nation is more liberal than it was two decades ago. On the other hand, it is more conservative today than it was in the mid-1990s. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that Republicans have opened substantial leads over Democrats on dealing with terrorism, foreign policy and taxes. They’re competitive on the economy, and a good deal more competitive than in the past on traditional liberal issues like immigration and health care.”

After Walter Mondale’s landslide loss in 1984 and the Michael Dukakis campaign’s implosion in 1988, Clinton acted on a lesson Democrats learned the hard way, and moved his party more to the center on fiscal policy, welfare, crime, the culture and foreign policy.

Wehner, who served in the last three Republican administrations, sees the tide turning without the Democrats taking notice. Over the past six years, beyond taking control of the House and Senate, the GOP has scored big gains in statehouses – among governors and legislators – so that nearly half of Americans, including those of us in Michigan, now live in states under total Republican control.

“The Obama years have been politically good for Mr. Obama,” Wehner concludes, “they have been disastrous for his party.”