Political scribe: How Red State Dems Blew It

For years now, argues The Week’s Matthew Walther, the Democratic Party “has attempted to make up for its complete lack of an economic agenda” with “a series of increasingly desperate performatively woke gestures.” And that’s probably going to cost them five red-state Senate seats in November. Americans rank economic problems “as their top concern,” he notes, while gay rights and transgender bathrooms “do not register at all.” Meanwhile, all five imperiled Democrats “have stuck to their party’s Clintonite right flank on economic issue.” Meanwhile, “They have wobbled on abortion, gay marriage, and other social questions about which their constituents have decidedly conservative views.” And so, “given a choice between a blue neoliberal who doesn’t care about moral issues and a red one who at least pretends to do so, Trump-state voters are going to choose the red one, albeit perhaps without enthusiasm.”