In sum, almost every new issue the new Democrat Party embraced proved an anathema to the middle class. Yet the party seemed almost uniquely prescient in foreseeing that progressive policies would bankrupt the country, hopelessly divide it, and leave it unworkable. Being talked down to by neurotic and dysfunctional elites only made the messengers force multipliers of their toxic messages.

If the Democrats were not addicted to woke, they would relegate all these suicidal policies to their graveyard of political misadventures, alongside the failed visions of George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.

But like all addicts, they can survive neither with nor without their fixes.