ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのZakaria has warning for Democrats after DeSantis' 'woke mob' email

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take." Ron DeSantis e-mailed me the other day, me and hundreds of thousands of others I imagine.

"Our country is currently facing a great threat," he began. I assume that with inflation soaring, gas prices still sky high and the economy in danger of slowing down, he would hit hard on those themes. But these bread and butter issues were not mentioned anywhere in the e- mail.

"A new enemy has emerged from the shadows," he continued, "that seeks to destroy and intimidate their way to a transformed state and country that you and I would hardly recognize."

As you might by now have guessed, this enemy is the radical vigilante woke mob. Some of this is a clever effort by DeSantis to tap into the base of the Republican Party and outflank Donald Trump on the kinds of issues that propelled Trump into the Republican nomination in 2016.

And the reason New Hampshire poll of likely Republican primary voters that had DeSantis neck and neck with Trump should worry Donald.

The Florida governor has much less name recognition than Trump and yet, in a bellwether state, the Floridian has caught up. But it also reflects the looming electoral strategy among Republicans who believe they have found a deep vulnerability among Democrats. A recent comprehensive "New York Times" poll seemed to confirm this view.

Analyzing some of the findings of the poll, David Leonhardt wrote many Democrats both politicians and voters especially on the party's left flank see more focused on divisive cultural issues than on most Americans' everyday concerns like inflation.

To be fair, President Biden still beats Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup but that dynamic might not help the Democrats in the midterm elections when Trump is not on the ballot.

There is plenty of evidence that the Democratic Party has moved left, that it is out of sync with Americans on many of these cultural issues, and that it needs to correct course. But it needs to do so clearly and forcefully and repeatedly.

Republicans are clever at weaponizing the words of a few left-wing Democrats and then branding them as the face of the party. For example, I have not found a single senior national Democratic leader who has ever endorsed the idea of defunding the police. Biden actually proposed increasing funding for cops, and yet Republicans have repeated this mantra constantly.

Democrats need to learn how to fight back, for example, by highlighting the most extreme abortion bans passed in Republican states and branding the Republican Party with them.

In Oklahoma, abortions are now banned with very few exceptions from the moment of conception onwards. In Mississippi, a doctor could face 10 years in prison for performing an illegal abortion.

Yet Democrats have another big weak spot and it centers on performance. Democrats in power often seem unable to get anything done.

Democrats squabble more and more in public than Republicans despite the fact that much of the GOP party establishment despised Donald Trump. Once he was elected, they nearly all fell in line, mostly passed his agenda and supported him unfailingly.

Democrats by contrast rarely remind the public of the two big bills that they did pass, COVID relief and infrastructure, and in fact spent months bickering over the third one that they've proposed, Build Back Better.

[10:05:02]

Why is the Biden administration not announcing large new public work projects every week financed by the federal funds appropriated in those two bills? The answer to that question might be that it has become very difficult

to build anything in America especially in blue states. President Obama who passed another big infrastructure bill in 2009 famously said later there is no such thing as shovel-ready projects.

That's because, as Ezra Klein has noted, the number of permits, reviews, and delays that have become part of the normal approval process have massively delayed or doomed the prospects of large scale public works in America.

Democrats have become paralyzed by their own ideas and interest groups and no one seems to be able to break through and actually get things done. It's not that there is any shortage of money.

Consider the state where I live, New York. The state budget is an eye- popping $220 billion. Florida with two million more people than New York state spends half that sum. In addition, New York City's budget is $100 billion.

That is more than double the budget for the entire state of Illinois, and Illinois's population is some 50 percent larger. New York is the most heavily taxed state in the country. Its tax rates are highly progressive.

The top 1 percent of New York City residents pay over 40 percent of the city's income taxes. And yet, New York's infrastructure and services at every level are in bad shape.

This is not a perception problem. It is a reality problem. Democrats need to once more become the party that gets stuff done, builds things and makes government work for people.
Go to CNN.com/fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week.