The media generally speak of Democrats as falling into one of two wings, usually contrasted as the progressive wing or as some mythical establishment moderate wing. 

Bernie Sanders and his squabbling squaw sidekick are placed in that first wing, while Joe Biden is always slotted into the second one alongside the blooming meatball.  But, at this point, Democrat politicians so fear their deranged leftist base that if there are indeed two wings, both are sprouting from the left side of the albatross, which could explain why the debates are so circular and tired as to even prompt a sad sigh from Van Jones.  When all of them are for and against the same things, what's the point in tuning in? 

When Malarkey isn't challenging Americans to push-up contests or protecting his son's privileged position with mouth open at a foreign cash beer bong, he sounds as though he is feeling the Bern.  All of these candidates are a product of the same Democrat base, which is how we landed at this point where the so-called Democrat moderates of today would have been considered dangerous radicals just a few short years ago. 

If you put together a radical menu, they are all ordering just about everything on it.

Destruction of the energy industry?  Order up a super-sized portion of that.  Abortion über alles?  I'll take a side of that and throw in some infanticide, please.  Government health care?  Naturally.  The green new $90-trillion nightmare?  Hey, just print more money and start killing cows.  Destruction of national borders and open invitation for all the world's unskilled workers to flock to America to receive taxpayer largesse?  It's the compassionate thing to do.  Gun confiscation?  Treating Iranian protestors like inconvenient lepers?  Reparations?  Keep those refills coming.

Moderate Joe is a myth, a media construction that bears no resemblance to reality, kind of like all current Democrat policy proposals.  It's doubtful that a moderate could even exist for long in today's Democrat party, where all the energy is built around Marxism, stoking racial resentment, and sending actual Americans to the back of the bus.

President Trump's debate tweet captured this phenomenon.  He wrote, "Democrats are now the party of high taxes, high crime, open borders, late-term abortion, socialism, and blatant corruption.  The Republican Party is the party of the American Worker, the American Family, and the American Dream!"

It's as if, in their interest to jettison all things Trump, Democrats decided they wanted to run on the reverse of his campaign motto.  Instead of developing a platform to make or keep America great, they decided that making Americans equally miserable and subordinate to non-Americans was the ticket to ride back to power.

If President Trump truly sought to make the noxious Squad the face of the Democrat party, he needn't have bothered.  Democrats have done everything in their power to do it on their own.

While this is good news for President Donald Trump's election prospects and America in 2020, the long-term prognosis is more doubtful for two reasons.  The first reason is that, at some point soon, one of these vipers will be elected president.  With immigration patterns and Marxist university indoctrination, that's a near mathematical certainty.

But the other problem is a little less obvious.  The hard leftism of the Democrat party is the equivalent of Mega Maid from Spaceballs, a sucking monster that sucks everything towards it, to include the Republican Party.  You already see the effect on Democrats.  Every one of them is playing a high-stakes game of reality-free extremism poker, making careful wagers aimed primarily at not offending the insane sensibilities of the party's most radical devotees.

At the latest debate, in which the media focused on the manufactured Elizabeth Warren hit on Sanders, six out of six Democrats agreed that we need to replace everything that is working with societal collapse.  As for subtle differences in policy positions, when you are doubling down on national insolvency, those differences are immaterial.

The old canard that the parties are essentially the same has never been less true.  There is a canyon between the viable national parties at this point, created mostly by the decisive leap of the Democrats off the reality cliff.  That canyon is the danger zone.

Over time, the sucking vortex of leftist extremism will draw the Republican Party into the open void, where less radical Democrats once existed.  More traditional Republican politicians will be tempted to slide next to Bill Kristol and the NeverTrump brigade in that void, creating the very real danger that both parties move to the left. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez inadvertently stumbled close to a truth when she recently said, "In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are."  With Joe Biden pandering to the most radical elements of the Democrat party, the distance between him and Ocasio-Cortez is akin to a rounding error, even if that is too much for the queen of inadvertent comedy.

But her statement is not far from the mark, because that is exactly the state of play in much of Europe.  Voters get to choose between a radical leftist and an almost radical leftist who represents the "center-right."  Think Angela Merkel, who has perhaps destroyed Germany slightly slower than her opponents would have done. 

President Trump has not taken the bait and is likely the Republican who was best positioned to stand against this pressure, aided by fierce Democrat hatred that ruled out any real possibility of compromise.  He has governed as the most conservative president of at least the last thirty years.  But it will be very tempting for more traditional politicians that follow him to tack left to chase disenfranchised voters for short-term gain.

The fact that the president is not a traditional politician served as a hedge against this kind of foolish short-term calculation that will result in long-term catastrophe.  It is why the president has been so successful and also why he was elected, a leader truly put in place for such a time as this. 

As an outsider, the president understood this in ways that many politicians did not.  He doesn't think in usual political bromides.  He tends to trust his gut.  On just about any issue, he asks two simple questions.  Is this in the interest of America, and is it Constitutional?

As Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he was asked if we had a republic or a monarchy.  Understanding the tenuous nature of government, he answered, "A republic, if you can keep it." 

We came within a hair of losing it in 2016, since I'm not sure the Constitutional Republic could have survived a Hillary Clinton presidency following immediately after eight years of Barack Obama. 

But Donald Trump did more than avert this catastrophe.  He has bequeathed to the Republicans a new coalition and governing philosophy, one that has bound Americans today around the quaint notion that political leaders should first and foremost champion America and act in the interest of all Americans, even the foolish ones.  Republicans now have a viable party, if they can keep it.  And the first steps to keeping it is resisting the pull to the left by the radical vacuum Democrats put into play while shutting the immigration floodgates.

Fletch Daniels can be found on Twitter at @fletchdaniels.

Image: Dimitri Rodriguez via Flickr.