The most striking thing about the Democrat Party’s perceived priorities is how unpopular they are, even as President Trump’s own popularity has seen ups and downs. The results of an early post-election Quinnipiac survey, which showed that only 31 percent of the electorate had a favorable opinion of what Democrats stand for, have remained essentially unchanged in subsequent polling.

So why, observers wonder, do the party’s best-known politicians seem to spend half their time doubling down on the very causes which lost them the 2024 election, as the other half attempts to discredit such widely favored Republican reforms as deporting criminal illegals and making the government more efficient?

It certainly is not for a lack of advice from friendly quarters. James Carville, Bill Maher, podcaster Jon Favreau, and CNN’s Van Jones are just some of the liberal commentators who have been pleading for a more appealing Democrat agenda. And it is hard to imagine that frequently mentioned up-and-comers like Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro are privately pleased with the lingering progressivism at the top of their party.

Part of the reason why Democrat politicians are reluctant to stake out more popular positions is clearly their fear of retribution from far-left activists. Writing in the current issue of City Journal, Manhattan Institute fellow Park MacDougald describes what happened to Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton when, shortly after the last election, he told the New York Times that his party desperately needed to rethink its position on transgender issues.

Immediately both local activists and national groups “accused Moulton of scapegoating trans people, descended on his office for a ‘Neighbors Against Hate’ rally, and pledged to primary him in his next election.” Moulton’s own campaign manager quit in protest, and the chair of one city in his district (Salem) denounced him as a “Nazi cooperator.”

But even should some moderate Democrat be willing to take on the party’s vengefully vigilant progressives, he or she would still have to contend with the wider public’s understandable skepticism that, once elected, any centrist impulse expressed during the campaign would endure. After all, President Biden ran as a moderate in 2020, only to later enable massive illegal immigration, pass an inflationary green energy bill, use the federal bureaucracy to imbed transgender rights, and favor the comfort of educators over the welfare of school children during Covid.

And while Biden’s own reversals can be attributed to a weakened mental condition, it is now quite clear that behind every would-be Democrat office holder is a political machine which takes every opportunity to push as far left as it can.

In other words, the country has come to see that while progressive thinking may not represent the average Democrat, it does advance the interests of those factions which supply the party with its funding, election manpower, and intellectual ammunition. Most prominently, the teacher unions, the vast majority of the country’s university professors and administrators, a variety of well-funded nonprofits, and those Wall Street investment firms specializing in government finance.

As a result, the party now suffers from what Democrat data analyst David Shor has appropriately termed a “trust deficit” — a skepticism on the part of voters that its more moderate candidates, no matter how sincere or capable, can be depended on to follow through on what they promise.

More than the wrath of party activists, the biggest problem facing any Democrat politician contemplating a move to the middle is much like that faced by any Republican in the 1930s who might have wanted to support President Franklin Roosevelt’s proposed Social Security legislation. Back then, a GOP candidate who genuinely approved of the idea would still not have been trusted to defend it against those powerful financial and intellectual forces in his own party which remained opposed to the very idea of big government entitlements.

Indeed, it was not until the 1950s, when Social Security had become such a firmly established part of American life that neither party dared be seen as wavering in support of it, when the public was finally willing to give Republicans another chance at the White House. And even then, the GOP needed a nominee widely admired for pulling off the D-Day landing and winning the war in Europe.

What this means for current Democrat politicians wanting to run as moderates is that they cannot hope to be successful until most of the signature policies that got Trump elected are believed by voters to be safe from reversal by powerful factions within their own party.

It is not sufficient for just the candidate to say he or she wants to control the border, take advantage of American fossil fuels, end woke social policies, and operate the government more efficiently. Enough party affiliated donors, interest groups, think tanks, and other factions must begin expressing compatible sentiments. They must demonstrate their acceptance of the fact that there has been what historians call a “change election” — one in which the American people have made up their minds on previously controversial issues and are not prepared to trust any party that threatens, either directly or indirectly, to reverse their judgment.

It is an encouraging sign for ambitious Democrat politicians that some left-leaning intellectuals have recently begun talking about the need for an “abundance agenda,” a “patriotic populism,” and similar sounding concessions to public opinion. It has also been reported that Adam Jentleson, former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) and aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), is privately pitching the establishment of a think tank called Searchlight to come up with policies more broadly acceptable to the general electorate.

How Far Need Democrats Go?

But what specifically are these would-be reformers prepared to accept? A border wall? Banning transgender men from women’s sports? School choice for children from poor families? We have yet to hear.

Voters are certainly sophisticated enough to appreciate that Democrat thought leaders cannot wholeheartedly endorse the very policies they so recently opposed and, to both save face and salvage something of their own, must triangulate “even better” versions. But vague concepts and flowery language — what blogger and journalist Matt Yglesias has termed “dog-whistle moderation” — cannot substitute for genuine accommodation.

It is conventional wisdom that Democrats currently have no politician capable of recapturing the White House. But it is far more likely that the smartest ones are simply waiting for the party’s most influential factions to provide the public with credible assurances that future Democrat candidates for high office will be allowed to move the country forward, not backward. For not until many of today’s GOP reforms have ceased to be controversial will voters once again trust Democrat leadership.

READ MORE from Lewis M. Andrews:

America’s Promise: Classically Educated Kids

Churches Bring School Choice to Every State

Dr. Andrews is president of the Kids’ Scholarship Fund (www.ksfct.org). His latest book is Living Spiritually in the Material World (Fidelis Books).