From commenter “Selfy”:

Talk Radio host Vince Coglianese said today that “non-DSA Democrats” support the same things that “Democratic Socialists” do, but they just won’t admit it.

Note the word “support.” I don’t know what most non-DSA Democrats believe. But I have noticed for years that almost all Democrats who run as moderates vote for every single far-leftist measure proposed in Congress.

During Trump’s first term and when Biden was president, the only rebels who stopped the far left’s plans to eliminate voting security and/or to make DC a state, for example, were Sinema (who ended up leaving the party and then leaving the Senate) and Manchin (who was from a deep red state). Here’s the history of the DC statehood bill, as a memory refresher:

In February 2019, the House Democratic leadership put its support behind legislation to grant D.C. statehood. H.R. 1, the For the People Act of 2019, included a nonbinding expression of support, passed 234 to 193 in March 2019 on a party-line vote, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed. …

On June 26, 2020, the House of Representatives passed the “Washington, D.C. Admission Act” 232–180 largely along party lines; Collin Peterson and Justin Amash were the only Democrat and Libertarian, respectively, to vote no. It died in the Republican-controlled Senate at the end of the 116th Congress. …

In 2020 and 2021, the full House of Representatives voted on statehood bills, both approved on party-line votes with Democrats in support and Republicans in opposition.

On April 30, 2021, Democratic senator Joe Manchin came out against both H.R. 51 and S. 51, effectively dooming their passage.

This is typical. When the leadership says hop, almost all of the Democrats hop, except for a few “mavericks.” The only current Democrat senator I can think of at the moment who might fulfill that maverick function is Fetterman, and probably only on foreign policy questions.

Again, I’m not sure what the moderates actually think. But what nearly all of them actually do is to support the far left, once elected. For the most part, it’s a distinction without a difference. When running for office, however, there’s a bit more pushback from some of the so-called moderates, especially if they live in purple districts or states.

The voting electorate is another story. The committed, activist sub-group is well-informed and holds to leftist principles. The rest of the Democrat voters probably have many different levels of awareness, but many vote on one or two issues (abortion in the past, Israel-hatred or “affordability” in the present, for example). It strikes me as very odd that Democrats have managed at the moment to campaign rather successfully on “affordability,” particularly since it was under Biden that inflation soared and prices got so high, and nothing that the Democrats have proposed recently would be likely to fix the problem. However, they address people who are hurting financially through a Robin-Hood-esque promise to take from the rich and give to the poor. I suppose that’s what the word “affordability” means to a lot of people.