The rhetorical excesses of "Defund the Police" or "Open Borders" embraced by a few primary candidates in 2020 has led the idea that the Democratic Party has raced to the left of the Berkley faculty. The actual positions of the Democrats on many of these issues is far more moderate than the GOP or the "popularist" critics make it out to be.
There is no question that Republicans think culture war issues surrounding CRT and MS-13 are winners for them. They think Trump and Glenn Youngkin won on those issues. I have serious doubts about that. I would argue that Youngkin won on school closures more than CRT. There is no question that these culture war issues motivate the GOP base, but that's not big enough to win elections.
We won't really know how the Dobbs decision overturning Roe will fare politically. It's unlikely to be popular. However, there are a bunch of other culture war issues that Democrats need to start running on.
One of them is academic freedom. Mini-Trumps like Ron DeSantis are pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in American politics. He's attacking Disney, which is another culture war issue that Democrats should pounce on, but his attack on academic freedom is one that Democrats need to talk about. Of course, "academic freedom" is a bit niche, in terms of framing. No one gives a shit about a University of Florida professor's work on non-binary genders in classical Greek literature.
Instead, framing DeSantis' actions as "thought police" attacks on your student's teachers could work. Or the idea that Big Government wants to punish your daughter's teacher for what she says or thinks can switch the narrative. Plus, it ties in to the idea that these self-same "conservatives" want to monitor a woman's uterus.
Culture War Police State can be an all encompassing angle to attack the GOP, but you can't wait until Labor Day to start telling your story.
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