When the Radicals Run the Show

Democrats won’t abandon their fringe until voters force them to.

POLITICS: By Walter Curt

The Democratic Party has a problem it refuses to face. They’ve handed the keys of their movement to the radicals, and now they live in fear of them. They won’t reverse course, they won’t moderate, and they won’t make even the smallest concession to common sense unless and until they lose again—and lose badly. That’s the only thing that forces a reset in politics. Pain teaches lessons that no poll or think tank ever can. Until then, they will keep sprinting toward the fringe, dragging the country along with them, while most Americans are left shaking their heads and asking how any of this became normal.

Take the simplest example: men in women’s sports. You’d think this would be the easiest line in the world to draw. Girls deserve fair competition. They deserve safety. They deserve a playing field where the outcome is determined by talent and effort, not by biological advantages that no amount of wish-casting can erase. This isn’t a 50/50 issue. It isn’t even 70/30. This is a 90/10 issue. And yet Democrats act like drawing that line is akin to burning down the Capitol. Why? Because the radicals in their own party will go on the attack the second someone says “no.” The leadership is terrified of its own base. So they continue to defend the indefensible, even as ordinary Americans—including plenty of Democrats— quietly roll their eyes.

This is not about popular demand. Nobody is marching in the streets for men to take over women’s podiums. This is about cowardice inside the Democratic machine. They’ve created a monster they can’t control. They gave the radicals veto power, and now they’re stuck. Every time they try to soften the edges, the online mobs, the activist groups, and the donor class scream betrayal. So they cave, over and over again, even when it means alienating 90 percent of the public. That’s not leadership. That’s hostage politics.

A party ruled by fear of its own radicals cannot function. It cannot unify. It cannot govern with any stability. It becomes, as it has now, a collection of slogans designed to obscure the fact that the engine room is being run by the loudest fringe. That’s why you get speeches about “unity” while policies drive people further apart. That’s why you get gauzy talk about “democracy” while parents are treated like domestic terrorists for questioning school boards. That’s why you get endless lectures about “values” while cities descend into chaos and stores lock up toothpaste behind glass. They can talk like statesmen all day long, but the results speak for themselves.

And yes, there is no masculine energy left in the party. None. Masculine energy is not some cartoonish display of swagger, it’s the ability to stand firm, to say “enough,” to protect what is good and refuse what is destructive. It’s the willingness to disappoint your own side when your own side is wrong. The Democratic Party has beaten that out of itself. It prizes compliance and fragility over backbone. It treats strength as a sin and cowardice as a virtue. That’s why every radical whim gets rubber-stamped and every voice of reason gets silenced. The people who used to say “no” have either retired or been pushed out. What’s left are figureheads with microphones, reading lines written by the activists who actually run things.

History proves that this only ends one way: with a loss so clear that even the consultants can’t spin it away. A narrow defeat won’t do it. They’ll blame the weather, the ballot layout, or a bad news cycle. But a decisive loss—one that rattles their sense of inevitability—is the only force that makes them hit the brakes. That’s how political parties reset. They don’t find religion on their own. They find it when voters hand them a beating they can’t explain away.

What would a real reset look like? It would start with common sense: women’s sports are for women, the border is real, crime is illegal, the family is the cornerstone of a healthy society. It would mean classrooms that teach reading, writing, math, and merit, not ideological fads. It would mean energy policy built on what families can afford and grids can handle, not what billionaires dream up from their yachts. It would mean law that treats everyone equally, not bureaucracy that divides us by categories and quotas. In other words, it would look like the America most of us grew up in, the America that still exists in the hearts of normal people, if not in the agenda of radical activists.

None of that will happen until Democrats are forced to face reality. They won’t do it voluntarily. They won’t do it because a pollster tells them to. They’ll only do it when voters remind them who’s in charge. Until then, they’ll keep letting the fringe drive the bus, even if it careens off the cliff. But here’s the good news: the people still have the wheel, if they’ll use it. When enough Americans stand up and say “no,” the radicals lose their stranglehold. And when that day comes, the party will either rediscover its spine or fade into irrelevance. The choice will be theirs, but the opportunity to deliver the lesson belongs to us.