(March 18) The national Democratic Party today is so openly hostile to political semi-centrists that it would rather lose elections than abandon its far-left ideology.
That’s the word not from a Republican public relations guru, but from a rising-star Democratic congresswoman. Or, rather, a congresswoman who was a rising star … but instead is retiring from Congress because she finds her party’s extreme liberalism untenable.
The story comes from veteran Politico reporter Rachael Bade, who interviewed Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida. Murphy, a Vietnamese refugee and former specialist at the Department of Defense, is stepping down from Congress at the youthful age of 43 after just three two-year terms. She told Bade that Democratic congressional leadership repeatedly tries to “beat moderates into submission” and “turn … anger and disappointment against their own members.”
Despite a perch on the powerful Ways and Means Committee and a position as co-chair of the Democrats’ center-leaning Blue Dog Coalition, Murphy said she has had enough of the bullying from so-called “progressives.” Even though only somewhat near the center can hold a Florida “swing district” for Democrats against a Republican takeover, she told Bade (paraphrasing her) that “her party right now doesn’t want a member like her. Centrist Democrats … are now greatly out of fashion,” even when the realistic alternative is a Republican.
And it’s not even as if Murphy is more of a centrist than she is an old-fashioned liberal (rather than an even more extreme hard-leftist). As of November 2021, Murphy had voted in line with President Joe Biden’s position on every single issue that actually reached the House floor. She is strongly for a number of gun-control measures, has a 100% pro-abortion voting record, co-sponsored a quite liberal “police reform” bill, and has a lifetime rating of less than 7% from the American Conservative Union. [Yet even for her, national Democrats are too far leftist. To read the rest of the column about why, please follow this link.]
