The New York Times editorial board dished out some tough love on Saturday to Democrats about what they termed as their “comprehensive defeat” last November. They published an editorial entitled “The Democrats are in Denial About 2024, “ and to their credit, they went through a fairly comprehensive parade of horribles to illustrate their point:

Democrats, the Times wrote, lost huge swaths of “working class, young, Asian, Black, Latino [and] foreign-born” Americans who had “voted Democratic before.” And it wasn’t just demographic; it was geographic. “Of the seven states whose population has grown the most since 2020, the Democratic Party won none…” Why? Well, “voters trusted Republicans more” on “inflation…immigration, crime, government spending, global trade and foreign policy,” which is pretty much everything except abortion. That? They own that.

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So what did the brie-nibbling, bow-tied cognoscenti recommend? “To regain voters’ trust, Democrats should…admit that their party mishandled Mr. Biden’s age…moved too far left on social issues…[and] remains too focused on personal identity and on Americans’ differences—by race, gender, sexuality and religion—rather than our shared values. On these issues, progressives sometimes adopt a scolding, censorious posture.”

Yikes. Okay. So, what to do? Drive turnout? Nope. Even that old electoral chestnut about the more people who vote, the better it is for Democrats is no longer operative. “David Shor, the bracingly honest Democratic data scientist, put it well: ‘We’re now at a point where the more people vote, the better Republicans do.’”

In short, the starched and stiffened Editorial Board says that “the party has to offer new ideas. …bold plans…” They wonder, seemingly about Governor Newsom of California, who has overseen the issuance of only four new building permits since the Palisades fire: “Where is the governor who does more than talk about an abundance agenda and actually cuts regulations to help America build?”

One can’t help but note that cutting regulations (like so much else of what’s listed here) is a “new” idea only if a Democrat embraces it. In other words, be more Republican to win. In fact, the entire editorial is essentially this: moderate. Be more like the other guys without actually being the other guys…which is the same magical thinking that animates one to believe one can “self-identify” as something one is not.

I guess it’s too much to expect that a party on the wrong side of pretty much every 80-20 issue dispenses magical thinking. They’ll just keep insisting Johnny can play on Mary’s team and hope—magically—that nobody notices. Oh, and be less snotty about it. Yeah. Less snotty. That’s the ticket.

Whoops. “Only 27 percent of Americans now have a favorable view of the Democratic Party. It is the party’s lowest approval rating in decades.”

Guess we noticed. Maybe support voter I.D.? Which is easily an 80-20 issue. Nope. On the wrong side of that one, too.

How about not voting repeatedly to support late-term abortion? Another 80-20. Nope.

Secure borders? Nope.

Peace? Nope. The once-hippie Democrats have now, amazingly, become the party of war.

Ok, how about no more “bake the cake” and forcing other people of faith to do things morally repugnant to them, like performing abortions? Nope. No ex-hippie “conscientious objectors” there, either. That’s also gone from their “brand,” such as it is. Heck, Obama sued nuns to provide abortifacients, remember? The Little Sisters of the Poor couldn’t even escape their clutches.

How about supporting our ally Israel? And not Hamas? Nope. No can do that, either. Israel is surrounded on all sides by countries that want it blown off the map, but noooooo… Democrats support the side that parachuted in and killed a bunch of 20-year-olds with such savage butchery that I can’t bear to detail it here.

How about something simple? Like clapping for a kid with brain cancer?

Nevermind.

There are others, but that’s just a short list of some positions the majority of Americans hold very dear that Democrats not only can’t moderate on, but I don’t think they’re constitutionally capable of moderating…at all. It’s just not in them. They’ve been fully captured now. Their progressive ideology is just too baked in…the cake, as it were.