The progressive Democrats are on a kamikaze mission

WASHINGTON >> The news for President Joe Biden keeps getting worse. His approval has fallen to 38% among registered voters, according to a new PostABC News poll — nearly matching President Donald Trump’s all-time low in the RealClearPolitics average. But unlike Trump, Biden began his presidency with almost 56% approval. No recent president has fallen from grace so far, so fast, so early in his presidency.

However, two findings in the Post poll stand out: Fifty-three percent of voters say Biden is not keeping his major campaign promises; and 62% are concerned Biden will do too much to increase the size and role of government in U.S. society.

They are right. As a candidate, Biden promised unity, moderation and bipartisanship. Instead, he was quickly captured by his party’s progressive wing, which convinced him that he should be a transformational president. But voters didn’t put him in office to be a transformational president. As Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D, explained after Republicans turned her blue state red, “Nobody elected him to be FDR. They elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.”

Even The New York Times is warning Democrats they are veering too far to the left and must “return to the moderate policies and values that fueled the blue-wave victories in 2018 and won Joe Biden the presidency in 2020.” Failure to do so, the Times cautioned, could lead to wipeouts of historic proportions in 2022 and 2024.

But while the Times and moderate Democrats might care about winning elections, progressives in Congress don’t. They know they don’t have a popular mandate for socialism — if voters wanted Biden to be FDR, they would have given him FDR-like majorities. Progressives know they have been given a brief window while Democrats have unified control of government to enact as much of their radical agenda as possible. Thanks to the Virginia election and Biden’s collapsing numbers, they know that window is closing fast.

They also understand that government is a one-way ratchet — and that once a new entitlement program is created, it almost never gets dismantled. Just look at Obamacare. Early in his first term, President Barack Obama rammed Obamacare through Congress, even though it was deeply unpopular. Result? Though Obama was reelected, on his watch Democrats suffered the largest loss in power of any party since Dwight D. Eisenhower — a net loss of 12 Senate seats, 64 House seats, 13 governorships and 816 state legislative seats. And those defeats paved the way for Trump’s presidency.

But a decade later, despite unified control of government and the appointment of three Supreme Court justices, Republicans have failed to repeal Obamacare or persuade the courts to strike it down. Now,

Democrats are back in power — and Obamacare is still here.

The lesson for progressives is clear: When you have power, use it. Don’t compromise. Don’t moderate. Seize the moment to expand the size and scope of government as much as you possibly can. It might cost you power temporarily, but Republicans won’t be able to reverse the progress you make. And when you get power back — as you inevitably will — you can pick up where you left off and continue the long march toward socialism.

In other words, the Democratic Party’s progressive wing is on a kamikaze mission. Does Biden really want to go along for the ride?