A recent piece in Real Clear Politics pointed out that the American people agree on a lot of things, notwithstanding the conventional wisdom that politics is polarized these days.

For example, the American people agree that the borders should not be open. They agree that people should present a photo ID when voting. They agree that men should not compete in women’s sports.

Not only do the people in general agree on these things, ordinary Democrats tend to agree on these things, too. (This is not true of every Democrat, of course; a few Democrats – and Republicans, too – are real loons.)

But these policies that most people favor – and most Democrats favor, too – are often opposed by elected Democrat politicians. Why do they oppose things that the Democrat rank and file support?

The short answer is that the elected Democrats are extremists.

OK, that’s the short answer. Elected Democrat politicians are more extreme than ordinary Democrat voters. But it leaves unanswered the bigger question: Why?

The longer answer to the bigger question is that the Democrats have become captive to large, left-leaning special interest groups. They are captive to the unions (especially the teachers’ unions), the environmentalists, the racial minority groups (especially the Blacks), the worldwide socialism movement (e.g., the George Soros family), and now the Muslims.

Each of these interest groups is far left in its own way. The environmentalists are utopian. The Blacks still see the Democrats as their Civil Rights saviors, since most are too young to remember Jim Crow. The Muslims have been at war with Western Civilization for, well, forever. The socialists are leftists by definition. Sadly, the teachers’ unions are more a union and less a group of teachers. Like all unions, they prefer collectivism over merit. 

These interest groups donate massive amounts of money to the elected Democrats. In return, the donors demand that the elected Democrats stand against the will of their voting constituency and in favor of the will of these leftist donors.

In short, elected Democrats are bought off.

The great scandal of our age in politics is that Democrat politicians have chosen their personal interest in getting re-elected over the policy interests of ordinary Democrats. An honest news media would report it.