Democrats at all levels of government have recently advocated and implemented an alarming number of radical ideas and policies across the nation.
It began with the emergence of so-called political correctness, and gathered steam with wokeism and its resulting “cancel culture,” in which traditional historical figures and American institutions came under attack with the support of political and cultural radicals abetted by the establishment media and the acquiescence of many on the liberal and progressive left.
But it especially accelerated in the pandemic period when many local officials, state governors, and figures in the federal executive branch took drastic actions, including widespread lockdowns and other individual and business restrictions, in the name of public health and safety.
Some of the latter policies initially made sense, and were generally accepted, but as so often happens, those with power over-reacted and over-reached, and in time the statistical and scientific justifications for many mandates proved to be in error, unclear, or misleading.
New extremes appeared in the form of movements to defund the police and the refusal by some urban officials to prosecute many crimes.
“Defund the police” soon provoked a huge negative reaction among urban voters, and was largely abandoned by Democrats. An apotheosis of this occurred very recently when a state Democrat Party official in Minnesota, an avid advocate of defunding the police, was carjacked and assaulted. She now has understandably reversed her position, and calls for increased police protection.
The latter phenomenon, the left’s aversion to punishing criminals, includes the unwillingness of local officials to prosecute blatant theft in retail stores in urban centers. This continues to plague San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Portland and other cities — with the inevitable result that stores, business services, offices, and corporations are closing their local operations and moving elsewhere — creating a retail crisis and also an inevitable exodus of residents from city centers.
A reaction to the edicts and policies of many educational institutions that exclude parental rights in controversial gender medical procedures has also provoked a growing voter reaction in recent school board elections across the country, especially where, as in California, it is now apparently illegal for parents to prevent medical procedures on their own underage children, and they even face losing custody if they don’t comply.
The left’s extremism has steadily grown. But it was in New Mexico, of all places, not in San Francisco or Chicago or Portland, where a public official recently went so far and so egregiously in an official act that virtually no one, including her own appointees and leaders of her political party, supported her. In fact, they largely denounced what she did.
Democrat New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham last week ordered a public health decree banning public carrying of guns in two major state counties, arguing that the U.S. Constitution and her oath to uphold it is not “absolute” — and that she has the power to overrule a constitutional right.
The response was immediate.
Every law enforcement official in the counties and state, all Democrats and some appointed by her, have repudiated her action and are refusing to abide by it. A federal judge, appointed by a Democrat president, promptly placed a hold on the order, declaring it obviously unconstitutional.
Because Governor Grisham’s ban on guns was for 30 days, the federal judge’s action, in effect, cancels it. Governor Grisham has responded to this remarkable and overwhelming public and official reaction by defiantly justifying her action. Her apparent motivation, to gain support from gun control advocates, has nonetheless totally backfired.
Previously thought to be a popular, generally moderate governor in a blue (Democrat) state, and in the second year of her first four-year term, with a distinguished New Mexico political surname, Lujan Grisham has probably ended a promising political career (she had been mentioned as a possible vice presidential choice). Now there are calls for her immediate impeachment.
But her political disaster reverberates beyond her native state. She has embarrassed the large and important national anti-gun movement. She has sobered Democrat and other officials everywhere, many of whom were perhaps considering actions that now would seem draconian and politically unwise.
Most importantly, she has focused attention on, and given a face to, the sort of extremism that might enable conservatives and moderates to rally to turn back the radical woke tide.
