A. Barton Hinkle on the Democratic Shift to the Left
It would take a heart of stone, as the fellow said, not to laugh out loud at President Barack Obama's recent comparison between the two major political parties.
"Ideological extremism," he told The New York Times, "is much more prominent right now in the Republican Party than the Democrats. Democrats have problems, but overall if you look at the Democratic consensus, it's a pretty commonsense, mainstream consensus. It's not a lot of wacky ideological nonsense, the way it is generally fact-based and reason-based."
Spoken like a true partisan, points out A. Barton Hinkle: My Side is calm and reasonable, and Your Side is full of raving lunatics. But in reality the Democratic Party is torn between a liberal establishment that wants more government, and an even more liberal wing that wants the same thing squared.