JOEL KOTKIN: Mean Girls Rising: Democrats are increasingly beholden to leftist radicals in their midst.

nce the putative party of the people, the Democrats are increasingly the party of political “Mean Girls.” Epitomized by the congressional “Squad,” radicalized women are driving the party ever further to the leftist fringe on issues such as embracing Hamas, apocalyptic climate policies, mass illegal immigration, and transgenderism.

Party organs including the New Republic and the New York Times hail these activists as the “future of the Democratic Party.” Unlike traditional Democrats who won over small business owners, members of industrial unions, and aspiring middle class minorities, the Mean Girls have broken with the New Deal tradition that united the party. Rather than appealing to the aspirations of families, in the new configuration it’s all about “the personal is political,” with lifestyle and sexual orientation as defining issues.

Conservatives of course have their off-key women like Laura Bobert and Marjorie Taylor Greem, but few consider them intellectual leaders or particularly feminist. In contrast, Irving Kristol a half century ago noted the “feminization of the Democratic Party,” a process accelerated by the decline in family formation, marriage, and child-rearing. Some outlets like Salon see the rise of women and the gender gap as providing the keys to obtaining unlimited progressive power. Although married women tend to vote Republican, albeit by a smaller margin than men, single women prefer the Democrats by a whopping 37 point margin, even as young men are shifting somewhat to the Right.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Sam Abrams notes that politically engaged women, particularly those at elite colleges, increasingly stand at the tip of the progressive spear. They are far more likely to support cancel culture than their male counterparts. Overall, the Left’s political Mean Girls follow an agenda shaped largely by feminists and gay activists.

As George Orwell foresaw: “It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers−out of unorthodoxy.”