AP
Say what you will about Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, at least he’s consistent.
The octogenarian lawmaker opened a rally in Milwaukee Friday with a performance by transgender musician Laura Jane Grace, who belted out profane lyrics like “Does your god have a big fat d–k? Cause it feels like he’s f–king me.”
It was the same sort of gleeful transgression-for-transgression’s-sake display that leftists have been reveling in for years — and at total odds with the attempts of others in Sanders’ caucus to adopt a less extreme tone.
Months after Donald Trump dispatched them with relative ease, Democrats are still searching for a remedy to their self-inflicted wounds.
On Sunday, Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) struggled to make sense of his vote against a bill protecting the integrity of women’s sports, in light of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent flip-flop on the issue.
“We want to make sure that these decisions are made . . . by the communities, by the schools,” Kim stammered.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) tried the same excuse.
“Republicans in Washington are saying they know better than parents and local school districts,” Baldwin complained.
Isn’t it interesting how national Democrats and their heavy, power-hungry hands suddenly go limp when they’re on the wrong side of an 80-20 issue?
The Baldwin-Kim method of dancing around their party’s near-religious insistence that men can become women and vice-versa only insults those it’s meant to persuade.
For years now, Democrats have staked out incomprehensible positions that have Americans questioning not just their judgment, but their sanity.
A mealy-mouthed deathbed conversion to federalism won’t cut it as a walkback.
Which brings us to Newsom and his attempted political makeover in anticipation of his inevitable 2028 presidential bid.
The project is a galling one.
For the better part of a decade, Newsom has been at the forefront of the progressive movement, embracing — and, when possible, implementing — every aspect of the far-left agenda en vogue in the Democratic Party.
And yet, on the debut episode of his new podcast, Newsom made news not for fiercely defending his long-held positions, but articulating completely new ones.
In one striking moment, Newsom called the participation of biological males in female sports “deeply unfair.”
In others, Newsom scoffed at the progressive “Defund the Police” campaign, distanced himself from the term “Latinx,” and mocked the practice of announcing one’s pronouns.
Who is he kidding?
The governor has spent years going to bat for the same causes he now claims to disdain.
Newsom has railed against conservatives for rejecting the bizarre, paternalistic “Latinx” craze, barred Golden State school districts from notifying parents when their children change pronouns, and just last year proposed nearly $200 million in cuts to state law-enforcement budgets.
His position on men in women’s sports was previously unmistakable: In 2021, he announced that his state wouldn’t go “backwards on these issues.”
If he’s really changed his mind, he can throw his weight behind one of two bills now in the California legislature that would demonstrate as much— but until he does, his empty words can be written off as cheap talk.
The episode underscores a larger problem for Newsom’s party.
Ever since Donald Trump’s first shocking defeat of Hillary Clinton, Democrats have responded not by reevaluating their priors, but by adopting more and more extreme positions.
In 2018, 2020 and 2022, Trump’s unpopularity proved powerful enough to help them either carry the day or fight to a draw.
But in 2024, Trump successfully capitalized on four years of absurdity sponsored by the Biden administration.
Notably, many of the Trump campaign’s most effective attacks on Kamala Harris pertained to the crazy-to-the-point-of-sounding-made-up ideas she had promoted during her last presidential campaign: 80% tax rates, the Green New Deal, free sex-change surgeries for illegal immigrants and more.
Harris, sensing the ground beneath her feet had shifted, tried to backpedal — but fearing the progressive activist class she had once indulged, she couldn’t bring herself to so much as feign a genuine about-face, resorting instead to half-baked equivocations issued through surrogates.
She prioritized the wants of those who sang along at the Sanders rally over those of persuadable, middle-of-the-road voters.
Give him credit, Newsom has the right idea.
The only way he can earn back Americans’ trust is by directly repudiating himself — and his own policies.
But the chances of that rebrand succeeding are hampered by reality.
The ambitious governor is just one member of an entire generation of Democrats who have spent their entire careers championing woke excesses — until Trump’s second victory convinced them they’d have to recalibrate.
It’ll take a lot more than a few empty words to undo the damage and convince the American people that their faux moderation isn’t just that.
Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite.