Kevin Drum:
Currently, Republicans are much closer to the median voter. in political attitude.
In 1994, the Democrats were exactly in the middle of the political divide, while Republicans were slightly more conservative (on a 10 point scale, Democrats were at 5, and Republicans at 6).
Fast forward to 2017, and Democrats are now at 2, while Republicans are at 6.5. The Republicans barely moved, while Democrats have shifted way to the left.
The result is that Democrats are basically picking up more white liberals, while losing white moderates, Blacks and Hispanics who tend to be more socially conservative than white liberals. In the last election, Democrats lost 9-11% of their Hispanic support. Demography apparently is no longer destiny.
Democrats have become the party of large urban areas, and losing support pretty mich everywhere else. As Drum points out, this does not bode well for future Democratic control of the House and Senate. They lost support in both in the last election, when everything was in their favor. And now crime and law and order issues are digging into their support in the big cities.
It should be a warning to Democrats that Black retired police officer and political moderate Eric Adams just won the Democratic primary in New York, running on a law-and-order platform and explicitly calling out the ‘Defund the Police’ foolishness from Democrats.