A major part of Hillary Clinton’s sales pitch against Donald Trump is that Trump represents the radical fringe of the GOP, while Hillary represents sane, adult centrism. Certainly the Bernie Sanders voters see her that way, as a centrist sellout, and Trump has managed to top all prior Republican candidates in simultaneously convincing voters outside the party that he’s a far-right loon while convincing voters inside the party that he’s a liberal squish.
Hillary’s actual beliefs are a matter of some debate; there’s some truth to views of her as both an ideological feminist culture warrior and a corporatist of the center on economic and foreign-policy issues. But even more so, especially after a quarter century in national politics and two contentious nomination fights against her left flank, she’s a political animal who dreads being out of step with her party’s base. And that means no amount of maturity or experience will make her someone who can be counted on to offer resistance to left-wing nuts taking over her party.
As Ben Shapiro documents, the newly announced draft Democratic-party platform vividly illustrates that the extremists are taking control. In areas from taxpayer-funded abortion to immigration to the minimum wage to the death penalty to jailing climate-change skeptics, the official party platform pushes the party farther to the left than it has ever been, even in the McGovern era. And the more Democrats believe that the GOP has disabled itself from running a contested presidential campaign, the harder they will push their party to the left.