The “energy” of the Democratic Party is on the left. That’s what the left kept telling us a year ago, before Joe Biden started vacuuming up large wins in the Democratic primaries. President Donald Trump has run with the notion, bellowing at rallies that the party has been “completely taken over by socialists, Marxists and far-left extremists.”

Not at all true. Set aside the massive media attention conferred on a tiny number of colorful hard-left Democrats and what do we see? We see a Democratic Party overwhelmingly dominated by moderates.

Start with the choice of Biden as the presidential nominee. After all, Democrats did have democratic socialist Bernie Sanders among their choices.

When Trump accused Biden in the first debate of agreeing with Sanders’ “manifesto” calling for “socialized medicine,” Biden responded, “The fact of the matter is I beat Bernie Sanders.” And he did, by 9 million Democratic votes.

Only 15 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters describe themselves as “very liberal,” according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. More surprisingly, 52 percent of Democratic voters identified as moderate or conservative.

One would think that the 43 Democrats who flipped Republican-held House seats in 2018 would be considered the energy of the party. But even mainstream media considered friendly to Democrats pay the moderates little mind; so absorbed are they by a handful of provocative lefties.

Recall the “60 Minutes” interview last year when Leslie Stahl asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about “conflicts” in her caucus. “You have these wings — AOC and her group on one side,” to which Pelosi famously responded, “That’s like five people.”

The obsession with such conspicuous figures as Sanders’ glamorous surrogate, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, harden the perception that the left runs the Democratic Party. The Washington Post has mentioned AOC 840 times over the last 12 months. It has mentioned Rep. Abby Finkenauer only 50 times.

Finkenauer is the Democrat who in 2018 roped a Republican seat in northeast Iowa. Anyone with a D after her name could have won AOC’s New York district. Not so for Democrats running in purple or red districts.

Other remarkable Democrats who helped hand their party control of the House include Ben McAdams in red Utah; Lucy McBath, an African American now serving Newt Gingrich’s suburban Atlanta district; and Sharice Davids, a Native American representing Kansas City and its Kansas suburbs.

Joe Cunningham now occupies a South Carolina seat that Republicans held for nearly 40 years — a district that went for Trump by over 13 points. In sum, Democrats now represent 30 House districts that voted for Trump in 2016.

What direction do rank-and-file Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters want the party to go? A Pew survey last year asked them whether the party should move more to the left or move to the center. Some 53 percent wanted the party to be more moderate and only 40 percent more liberal.

Still, the unfounded charges that the hard left runs the party has forced candidate Biden to repeatedly put distance between his positions and those of a few Democrats on the fringes. He opposes defunding the police. He opposes a ban on all fracking. As for packing the Supreme Court, Biden says he’s “not a fan.” And his proposals for reforming health care don’t include a Canadian-style single-payer system, Sanders’ signature issue.

A convincing Biden victory could alter the impression-turned-cliche that the left flank controls the party. And it may persuade some of the national media to ratchet down their fixation with a few flashy radicals.

Biden’s solid poll numbers in conservative parts of the country only confirm the reality: The energy of the Democratic Party is in the middle — and how exciting that is.

Froma Harrop is a syndicated columnist. Follow her on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. 

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