Mean Girls Rising

Once the putative party of the people, the Democrats are increasingly the party of political “Mean Girls.” Epitomized by the congressional “Squad,” radicalized women are driving the party ever further to the leftist fringe on issues such as embracing Hamas, apocalyptic climate policies, mass illegal immigration, and transgenderism.

Party organs including the New Republic and the New York Times hail these activists as the “future of the Democratic Party.” Unlike traditional Democrats who won over small business owners, members of industrial unions, and aspiring middle class minorities, the Mean Girls have broken with the New Deal tradition that united the party. Rather than appealing to the aspirations of  families, in the new configuration it’s all about “the personal is political,” with lifestyle and sexual orientation as defining issues.

Conservatives of course have their off-key women like Laura Bobert and Marjorie Taylor Greem, but few consider them intellectual leaders or particularly feminist. In contrast, Irving Kristol a half century ago noted the “feminization of the Democratic Party,” a process accelerated by the decline in family formation, marriage, and child-rearing. Some outlets like Salon see the rise of women and the gender gap as providing the keys to obtaining unlimited progressive power. Although married women tend to vote Republican, albeit by a smaller margin than men, single women prefer the Democrats by a whopping 37 point margin, even as young men are shifting somewhat to the Right.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Sam Abrams notes that politically engaged women, particularly those at elite colleges, increasingly stand at the tip of the progressive spear. They are far more likely to support cancel culture than their male counterparts. Overall, the Left’s political Mean Girls follow an agenda shaped largely by feminists and gay activists.

In its drive to appeal to these groups, and keep them from going off the rails, the Biden Administration has embraced sexual attitudes that are far removed from traditional norms. Secretary of State Antony Blinken may fail to address Russia, Hamas, or Iran but feels compelled to urge diplomats to eschew “sexist” words like “father.” The president himself has promoted transgenderism as the “civil rights issue of our time,” even issuing a proclamation that celebrated a “Transgender Day of Visibility” on Easter.

The radicalization of educated women also reflects a steady deterioration in gender relations. Women now collect nearly 60 percent of bachelor’s degrees. And they generally outnumber men in academia: 75 percent of Ivy League presidents, 66 percent of college administrators, and 58 percent of recent graduates are now female. Universities have become the primary generators of feminist and gay ideology. On college campuses, as author and longtime feminist Susan Jacoby notes, even the most sensitive and sympathetic men “have been robbed of their true nature and humanity.”

Read the rest of this piece at American Mind.

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Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Fred Murphy under CC 2.0 License.