ght for the day: Joel Kotkin on Midterm // (Steven Hayward).

Glad to see Joel Kotkin, a former progressive, thinks as I do about long-term effects of the mid-term. He writes at UnHerd.

Despite their cautious optimism yesterday afternoon, a modest victory in the Midterms may be all the Democrats need. If they had performed as expected, the Democrats and their media associates would be busy dissecting their defeat. However, what must be considered a lost Republican opportunity — losing little in a country that is now experiencing a drop in lifespans — also means the Democrats may be slower to address their weaknesses and may have to accept the unpopular Joe Biden as their leader in 2024.

The Democrats will be fooled into believing that Biden’s polarizing agenda is a vote-winner, as there is no sign of a Republican resurgence. . . They had to rethink their politics after they failed in the past. The Democratic Leadership Council was established in 1984 after Walter Mondale lost to Reagan by a landslide. It eventually supported Bill Clinton and, in some cases, Biden. The moderate Coalition for a Democratic Majority was founded in 1972 after Nixon’s defeat of McGovern. It’s difficult to believe that now is the right time for a new political vision, considering that virtually all of the prominent blue state Democrats won, sometimes with larger than expected margins.

Instead of spending the next two years regrouping and crafting a political program that could win the next elections, the Democrats now seem stuck with a weak leader that appears unfit for dealing with the global issues that will define America over the coming decade. The Democrats are also becoming more unstable internally. A stronger-than-expected Midterms performance doesn’t mask the fact that the progressives remain a dominant faction in the party — with an associated agenda that, outside of deep blue-college towns and core cities, commands remarkably low levels of support, as Barack Obama and others have warned.