Democratic Progressivism--100 years plus, still going. . .going . . .

Are Democrats in a rut? Jay Cost of the conservative Weekly Standard writes:

For over a decade, Democrats have been salivating at the prospect of demographic changes propelling them to permanent majority status. Obama in particular has been active on this front, and has ruthlessly divided the country along race, gender, and class lines in the hope of speeding this process along. But he has overlooked two historical realities[:]

• parties adapt, and; 

• despite our political class’s pretensions to power, they remain mere pawns [to, in Constitution architect James Madison’s words, a] “variety of parties and interests.” 

So is the public in fact tiring of Democrats’ constant effort to build and hold together its minorities-unmarried women-hip youth coalition? Maybe.

James Taranto in the conservative Wall Street Journal finds even the New York Times concerned about the stridency and bluntness of Democratic attempts to inject race into the mid-term elections. Taranto quotes the paper I brand “the liberals’ Pravda” writing:

In the final days before the election, Democrats in the closest Senate races across the South are turning to racially charged messages—invoking Trayvon Martin’s death, the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and Jim Crow-era segregation—to jolt African-Americans into voting and stop a Republican takeover in Washington.

The images and words they are using are striking for how overtly they play on fears of intimidation and repression. And their source is surprising. The effort is being led by national Democrats and their state party organizations—not, in most instances, by the shadowy and often untraceable political action committees that typically employ such provocative messages.

Taranto calls “surprising” the Times story’s "somewhat disapproving tone,” adding, “It’s a news story, but it wouldn’t be hard to rewrite it into an opinion piece arguing that the Dems are getting desperate.”